Falling into poverty

As many as one-third of all poor people were not born poor. They fall into poverty during their lives for all kinds of reasons that could have been prevented, says Duke policy professor Anirudh Krishna. He and a group of researchers spent the last decade talking to over 35,000 families in India, Kenya, Peru, Uganda and the U.S. to answer this question: Why are people poor? From IndiaRealTime:

Some of these reasons are similar across different domains, including right here in North Carolina. People have fallen into poverty on account of a chain of negative everyday events like illnesses and [spending on] marriages and deaths. Some of these factors vary considerably across and both within countries, suggesting the approach to poverty reduction needs to be contextual. What's common everywhere is the contribution illness and high health care costs make to the reproduction of poverty.