Citation

Goodhand J. World Dev. 2003; 31(3): 629-646.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2003, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/S0305-750X(03)00009-3

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between chronic poverty and violent conflict. Three types of potential linkage are examined: (a) long-term conflict causes chronic poverty, (b) chronic poverty causes violent conflict (grievance-based analysis), (c) resource wealth (rather than chronic poverty) causes violent conflict (greed-based analysis). Research to date has analyzed poverty-war linkages but chronic poverty has not been a focus. It is hypothesized that long-term conflict is likely to be a "driver" and "maintainer" of chronic poverty but a relationship in the opposite direction is less likely i.e., the chronically poor are less likely to ferment violent conflict than the transiently poor. The paper highlights the fact that current knowledge on poverty-conflict links is contested and further research is required on chronic poverty and war.