From Poverty to Social Exclusion: A Livelihoods Introductory

This chapter starts with a brief overview of the origin and gist of livelihoods studies. The second section shows that persisting and even rising inequalities currently represent the main global social problem rather than ‘poverty as such’. Therefore it is argued in the third section that the essence of livelihoods studies should move from poverty as such to understanding how the poor can be ‘included’. This in turn entails a thorough understanding of the exclusionary processes the poor are subject to.