From Microfinance to Business Planning: Escaping Poverty Traps

Poverty goes beyond social inequalities and it is concerned with the failure of the underserved, due to their social condition and to asset deprivation, to acquire and maintain a minimum set of basic capabilities–such as nutrition, instruction, clothing, housing needs, basic healthcare–which prevent the poor from fully participating in labor and credit markets–hence the importance of microfinance. Dehumanizing poverty goes also beyond low levels of current income and consumption, being concerned with the inability to freely access the market economy. Social exclusion from the benefits that others can enjoy is typically an enduring phenomenon, which is hard to eradicate, together with vulnerability to adverse shocks, due to the absence of social safety nets.