Rogers, Catherine Lee
Description
This thesis examines aspects of poverty, risk and coping
mechanisms in remote rural Papua New Guinea. The three essays
draw on a unique cross sectional data set,
collected in February 2012, from a study area in Obura Wonenara
District in Eastern Highlands Province. The essays contribute to
filling a gap in the literature on poverty in Papua New Guinea,
which, to date, has had limited household studies of poverty in
remote areas, and has largely neglected the...[Show more] role of a range of
risks and their relationships to poverty as well as the role of
informal insurance networks in responding to different kinds of
risks. The essays also add to the scarce international literature
on poverty in remote locations, and extend the international
literature on informal insurance by studying both inter-household
and intra-household transfers, and examining the extent of
external support networks. The results show that the study area
households face extraordinarily high levels of risks and are very
weakly networked. Geospatial factors interact with inadequate
government services, low levels of human capital, a lack of
markets and underdeveloped family and social capital to
contribute to the community members living in poverty, with
limited household assets. Even those with higher asset levels are
likely to be animal-based protein deficient. Multiple market
failures mean that coping mechanisms are limited and there is an
excessive reliance on consumption-reducing strategies. Households
are too poor to enter into extensive informal insurance networks,
which are underdeveloped both between and within households. Only
a handful of households have potential insurers outside of the
study area. The poorest within the study area are relatively
geographically disadvantaged,more food insecure, more exposed to
serious risk, more reliant on consumption reducing strategies and
less insured through social networks. However, while relative
poverty within the study area is certainly real, the main
conclusion from the research is that nearly all of the people
living in the study area are poor and extremely vulnerable to
suffering from irreversible harm due to malnutrition.
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