Questioning the Power of Resilience: Are Children Up to the Task of Disrupting the Transmission of Poverty?

20 Pages Posted: 1 Feb 2011

See all articles by Elizabeth Cooper

Elizabeth Cooper

University of Oxford - Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology

Jo Boyden

University of Oxford - Department of International Development

Date Written: April 1, 2007

Abstract

Resilience is an increasingly popular term employed in child development and international development discourse. Applied to childhood poverty, poverty over the life course and the intergenerational transmission of poverty, the resilience of boys and girls may be considered as serving as a conceptual and analytical tool for examining the ways in which young humans are able to overcome the negative outcomes of poverty and prevent its transfer within families, households and communities. This paper reviews the development and application of the concept and assesses its usefulness for poverty researchers and practitioners. Since resilience has not yet achieved a generally accepted definition or a credible theory of how it functions, it does not benefit the field with improved analytical precision. Efforts to improve understanding of the causes and effects of children's poverty and the intergenerational transmission of poverty would be better served by relinquishing the metaphor of resilience while retaining the focus on particular factors that moderate and mediate poverty experiences and outcomes.

Keywords: Childhood Poverty, Risk, Resilience

Suggested Citation

Cooper, Elizabeth and Boyden, Jo, Questioning the Power of Resilience: Are Children Up to the Task of Disrupting the Transmission of Poverty? (April 1, 2007). Chronic Poverty Research Centre Working Paper No. 73, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1753009 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1753009

Elizabeth Cooper (Contact Author)

University of Oxford - Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology ( email )

Oxford
United Kingdom

Jo Boyden

University of Oxford - Department of International Development ( email )

3 Mansfield Road
Oxford, OX1 3TB
United Kingdom

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