Abstract
The main objective of this book is to explore how different households respond to poverty and to identify the factors determining the extent to which they succeed in reducing their deprivation. Apart from the introduction (chapter 1) and the conclusion (chapter 11), the book consists of nine chapters. Chapter 2 provides an extensive review of the main theoretical literature on household response to poverty. After summarising the main issues surrounding the definition and measurement of poverty and household survival, the author provides an in-depth critique of these concepts. In chapter 3, the author provides a thorough and critical assessment of the current explanations of household response and their outcome for poverty and presents her own explanatory model. On the basis of her review of the existing literature, with which the Turkish literature on the subject is skilfully merged, she develops the 26 hypotheses that are tested in the study, regarding income generation and diversification, income allocation, consumption and investment and credit use. Chapter 4 describes the research design and method of the study involving a short-term longitudinal study of 17 low-income households in a gecekondu (squatter) settlement in the Turkish capital, based on two field visits in April and October 2002.
Focusing on the factors related to both the supply and demand sides of the labour market, chapter 5 addresses the question of why some households are more successful in reducing deprivation by income generation activities. The author continues to explore the same question in chapter 6 by examining income allocation, investment and consumption behaviour. Chapter 7 examines the changes in levels of deprivation during the six months separating the two field visits and examines the causes of the success or failure in reducing deprivation during this period. Chapters 8, 9 and 10 are based on detailed case studies of three households with different levels of deprivation (a relatively better-off household, a moderately deprived household and a worse-off household). Chapters 5–10 also utilise responses given by male and female members of households during interviews conducted by the author.
This study clearly shows that, to avoid generalisations and to understand poverty in its full complexity, we need to incorporate into our analyses the multiplicity of factors that cause poverty and the main mechanisms used by the poor in dealing with it. The smaller the poverty population, the more fruitful is this task. Hence the valuable information that this study reveals about one specific locality in Ankara. Even here, it seems, there were statistical and conceptual problems. These arose foremost from the small sample size as well as the bias involved in its distribution—such as nearly two-thirds of the sample households being of the alevi religious group. Moreover, even the 23 deprivation measures used in the study covering monetary, consumption and work-related spheres may not be sufficient to come to grips with the full complexity of the subject; for instance, the study group pays only scant attention to problems associated with social exclusion. These statistical and conceptual difficulties notwithstanding, we gain highly useful information about the precarious lives of the poor in a labour market characterised by deep informality, the existence of a large ‘reserve army’ of workers, the absence of social security, weak and declining trade unionisation, lack of enforcement of even the most basic formal arrangements such as health and safety at work, and the weak bargaining position of workers, especially during times of deep economic crisis. The book documents the reciprocal help mechanisms among the poor together with the extent of favouritism in the Turkish cultural context encompassing even the normally routine processes like school registration and health provision, and the adverse effect of economic crises on social relations. We also learn that, even in a small locality, the poor emerge as a highly heterogeneous category, exhibiting the wide range of problems confronting them.
This reviewer finds himself broadly in agreement with the author in her basic approach and treatment of the subject of poverty and deprivation. In particular, it is refreshing to observe her elevation of the labour market in general to central stage in explaining the factors behind and finding solutions for the problem of poverty. I agree with her conclusions that deprivation is associated more with ‘primary’ than ‘secondary’ poverty and that it is the capacity of resources to deliver benefits (as determined by structural forces such as macroeceonomic decline, labour market conditions and state housing and social security policies) that determines successful household response to deprivation. I welcome her emphasis on equality of opportunity in access to public services in education and health and the importance of income allocation at the intrahousehold level. I also share her rather lukewarm enthusiasm for palliative policy measures such as micro credit to make a lasting contribution to poverty alleviation and support her call for an employment-centred approach to poverty reduction.
A number of shortcomings of the book stand out. In a study covering a period when the effects of the devastating 2001 crisis were in full force and with much bearing on the results of the study, one would have expected a fuller discussion of the overall impact of the crisis, as well as the broad contours of Turkish neo-liberalism that has shaped both economic and social policies since 1980. Some might find the six months between the two visits to the field to be too short an interval for taking stock of the changes affecting the lives of the poor, even from a short-term perspective. The discussion on the policy implications of the study would have been put in better perspective if it had been preceded with a more detailed description and evaluation of the current efforts and policy regime directed at poverty alleviation. The study, along with others employing a similar methodology, takes the respondents’ account of their financial situation at face value, often disregarding the fact that people are perhaps most secretive about their income and wealth. More attention could be devoted to person-to-person assistance as part of Turkey’s tacit social security system. Such assistance, although hard to document, may reach substantial levels especially during the religious holy months. The author’s diligence in word-by-word translation of responses of interviewees may at times make some of these remarks unintelligible, especially for those readers not familiar with Turkish colloquialisms. Although they are referred to in the book by their pseudonyms, detailed description of some of the respondents and their activities and relations with others may have been in breach of their privacy and anonymity. The three case studies of individual households belonging to different categories of deprivation, presented in separate chapters, while providing deep insights about degrees of deprivation in diverse groups, still leaves one in doubt as to whether this categorisation takes account of the very worst cases of deprivation. While the extensive bibliography given at the end of the book will no doubt be of great help to researchers of poverty, the limited coverage of the index does not do justice to the wide range of subjects and concepts discussed in the text.
One should keep in mind that the book’s results cannot be extended spatially. The characteristics of the sample are too location-specific to have a direct relevance for other locations. Neither can the results be extended temporally as they are too heavily influenced by the immediate aftermath of the 2001 crisis. Despite its shortcomings, this study is definitely one of the best attempts to understand poverty in Turkey, treating it from the broader deprivation perspective and taking into consideration both the objective and subjective dimensions. Likewise, household response to deprivation is analysed in its full complexity, by incorporating factors such as intrahousehold income allocation and success and failure factors as well as others like labour market processes and social network relations. With the extensive and critical survey of the main issues surrounding the poverty debate that it provides right at the outset, the composite index of poverty it develops, and the in-depth interviews it conducts within three different household categories, as well as its methodological approach combining statistical analysis with qualitative assessments, this book makes an invaluable contribution to the poverty literature in Turkey and elsewhere. It would be a very interesting and fruitful exercise if a follow-up study could be conducted in the same area to trace the longer-term changes.