Fostering Dialogue to Break the Cycle of Intergenerational Poverty

In addition to taking a narrow focus on income, poverty issues have typically been examined with a focus on discrete groups, such as children, women, rural, or indigenous people. In contrast, a broader focus on the interconnectedness of the lives of poor mothers, fathers, and children can lead to a greater understanding of the chronic poverty that is transmitted from one generation to the next. Meeting global poverty reduction goals will therefore require a closer look at how and why children born into poor families become poor adults and then raise children who also become trapped in a life of poverty. The Intergenerational Dialogue Project described in this report builds on this perspective, with the goals of expanding knowledge of and solutions to the transmission of poverty from one generation to the next.