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Type
Articles & Essays
Author
Lourdes Beneria and Maria S. Floro
Posted
September 17, 2008
Categories
Human Rights
Peace & Conflict
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This paper examines the nature of current labor market informalization and its links with poverty and household survival. It explores conceptually the dynamics of informality and demonstrates the interconnectedness of job precariousness, vulnerability and gender relations. The paper also examines empirically, using Bolivia and Ecuador households and individual workers sample data collected in 2002, the critical role of women informal workers in household maintenance and social reproduction.
The persistence of poverty in the developing world and the increase in the importance of the informal economy has typified socio-economic trends during the past three decades. Hence, the need to re-conceptualize the informal economy and its significance for sustainable growth and human welfare. Likewise, we need a better understanding of the different forms that economic insecurity takes in order to rethink issues of distribution and social policy related to different vulnerable groups. In this sense, gender divisions represent an important dimension in the distribution of the burden of poverty and economic insecurity. Socially ascribed positions of workers affect their vulnerability; thus this paper investigates the degrees of informality and the extent of income volatility among home-based workers in Bolivia and Ecuador.
The empirical section is based on the 2002 sample survey data of poor urban households engaged in home-based work collected in Bolivia and Ecuador as part of a four-country research project that attempts to understand the roles of financial and labor resources in the coping strategies of urban poor households as their countries undergo rapid global market integration, financial crises and economic restructuring .The survey instrument is comprehensive and involves questions on household and community characteristics as well as informal employment, savings, assets, credit, and participation in household decision making. It also attempts to take into account the distinct needs of women and men in poor households, their multiple roles and specific concerns by collecting separate head and spouse data on employment, savings, credit and household decision making.
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File: BENERIA, Lourdes y FLORO, Maria S. - Deconstructing Poverty - Inglés.doc
Filesize: 438 KB
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