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AbstractWe consider the concept of poverty from the asset-accumulation approach and propose an integrated framework, building upon existing theories, to describe how the interconnected factors of trust (or lack thereof) and social distance can reinforce poverty traps. Social distance is influenced by choice, while trust is the symptom that defines the strength of social ties on a group. We look at how an absence of trust influences how households make decisions about the use and accumulation of assets in ways that could perpetuate poverty. Weak trust also affects how groups interact with each other in a society, creating "trust clusters" within homogeneous groups and antagonism across groups, which in turn affects aspirations and leads to an erosion of the basis of a social contract. For more effective and sustainable poverty reduction, we need to understand these linkages and address them systematically.

The measurement of poverty is necessarily subjective, whether it be defined from above by a measurement institution, or bottom-up, by the impoverished group itself. A poverty self-rating system was employed annually in the Philippines, 1981-1992 (annual N = approximately 1,200), while the government's Family Income & Expenditure Survey (FIES) was run only in 1985, 1988, & 1991. Per the self-rating approach, poverty was very volatile during the periods, 1983-1985, 1987/88, & 1990-1992; no such volatility was apparent in the 3 FIESs. Time-series regression analyses placed the self-reported volatility in relation to changes in the rates of inflation & unemployment. 4 Tables, 2 Figures, 13 References. Adapted from the source document.

Citizenship is essentially about membership in society which enables citizens to participate in the affairs of their community on roughly equal terms and culturally enjoins upon them to collectively surmount their commonly felt problems, such as poverty. The role of Self-Help Groups (SHGs) should be understood in this context. Through observation and conversation-analysis methods, this paper studies two SHGs in India: the successful one practiced citizenship, envisaged a sense of community and made progress towards capacity building and empowerment, especially pertaining to education, health and sanitation. It concludes that in developing countries, citizens acquire the appropriate virtues through participation in the programmes linked with their vision of well-being and thus strengthen the cause of citizenship.