Social cash transfers, generational relations and youth poverty trajectories in rural Lesotho and Malawi

青年贫困很重要，尤其是因为它对未来的影响，然而，研究人员或决策者很少关注农村青年的贫困问题。最近在撒哈拉以南非洲应对贫困政策方面的主要创新是向穷人支付现金的社会现金转移（SCT）计划。越来越多的证据表明，这些措施解决了其目标人群，特别是儿童和老年人的贫困症状。然而，影响评价很少注意到它们对年轻人或代际关系的影响。研究人员越来越多地认识到，贫困是通过结构性权力关系产生的，包括政治和经济关系，以及社会群体内部和社会群体之间的关系（基于性别、年龄、代际和阶级等社会分类）。如果要充分了解sct的影响，就有必要研究它们如何干预并通过这些结构关系进行协商。该研究没有将sct作为一个基于年龄的类别来考察其对青年的影响，而是侧重于它们对构成青年生活的权力关系的影响。根据最近关于发展“一代”的呼吁，它研究了sct如何塑造代际关系（老年人和年轻人之间；同一年龄段成员之间；生命阶段之间；以及年轻人与其更广泛的结构背景之间）。由于代际关系与其他社会关系相交，sct对年龄和性别关系的影响也将被检查。该提案解决了以下问题：什么因素决定了进入和摆脱贫困的途径以及人们对这些途径的体验，政策如何才能以可复制和扩大的方式创造出摆脱极端贫困的持续途径？它着重于两个在过去十年中建立了对比的sct的国家：莱索托（社会养老金和儿童补助金）和马拉维（向极度贫困的劳动力受限家庭提供sct）。确定具体的结构性权力关系如何影响年轻人的贫困轨迹，特别关注代际关系2。确定在马拉维和莱索托运作的sct如何干预这些结构性权力关系，以及对年轻人贫困轨迹的影响3。研究国家和国际机构之间的政治和经济权力关系如何影响SCT计划的设计和实施4。分析年轻人的贫穷轨迹和政策对策，在概念上将国家和国际政治经济进程与代际、年龄和性别的社会关系联系起来。开发和完善一种方法方法，促进年轻人参与识别和分析其贫困经历根源的结构关系方法该研究将增加先前项目（2007/8）的丰富数据集，该数据集详细描述了两个村庄80名10-24岁年轻人的生活史和愿望。将对这些年轻人进行后续访谈，其中一些家庭将开始接受sct，以绘制他们的贫困轨迹并探讨影响因素。此外，我们还将对每个村庄接受sct的五个家庭成员进行深入访谈，以进一步探讨对性别、年龄和代际关系的影响。随后，由年轻人组成的参与性讲习班将更深入地研究产生和延续贫困的过程，以及sct如何干预这些过程。同时，一名博士生将与政策制定者一起进行研究，重点是目标3。最后，由各机构、非政府组织和政府代表参加的讲习班将进一步分析调查结果，以实现目标4并确定关键的政策教训。

Youth poverty is important, not least because of its implications for the future, yet rural youth poverty in particular has received little attention from researchers or policy makers. The major recent innovation in policy responses to poverty in sub-Saharan Africa has been social cash transfer (SCT) schemes which disburse cash to poor people. There is growing evidence that these address symptoms of poverty among their target populations, particularly children and the elderly. However, impact evaluations have paid minimal attention to their effects on young adults or generational relations.Researchers increasingly recognise that poverty is produced through structural power relations including political and economic relations, and relations within and between social groups (based on social categorisations such as gender, age, generation and class). If the impacts of SCTs are to be fully understood, it is necessary to examine how they intervene in and are negotiated through these structural relationships.Rather than examining the impacts of SCTs on youth as an age-based category, the research focuses on their effects on the power relationships that structure young lives. Drawing on recent calls for a 'generationing' of development, it examines how SCTs shape generational relationships (between older and younger people; between members of an age cohort; between life phases; and between young people and their wider structural contexts). As generational relations intersect with other social relations, effects of SCTs on relations of age and gender will also be examined.The proposal addresses the call question: What factors shape pathways into and out of poverty and people's experience of these, and how can policy create sustained routes out of extreme poverty in ways that can be replicated and scaled up? It focuses on two countries that have instituted contrasting SCTs in the past decade: Lesotho (social pensions and child grants) and Malawi (SCTs to ultra-poor labour constrained households).Objectives1. To identify how specific structural power relationships shape young people's poverty trajectories, focusing particularly on generational relations2. To identify how SCTs operating in Malawi and Lesotho intervene in these structural power relationships, and the consequences for young people's poverty trajectories3. To examine how political and economic power relationships between national and international institutions are implicated in the design and implementation of SCT schemes4. To develop an analysis of young people's poverty trajectories and policy responses that conceptually connects national and international political economic processes with social relations of generation, age and gender5. To develop and refine a methodological approach that facilitates the involvement of young people in the identification and analysis of the structural relations at the root of their experiences of povertyMethodsThe research will augment a rich dataset from a previous project (2007/8) which detailed the life histories and aspirations of 80 young people, then aged 10-24, in two villages. Follow-up interviews will be conducted with these young people, some of whose households will have since begun to receive SCTs, to map their poverty trajectories and explore influencing factors. In depth interviews will also be conducted with members of five households per village in receipt of SCTs to explore further the impacts on relations of gender, age and generation. Subsequently, participatory workshops with groups of young people will examine in greater depth the processes that produce and perpetuate poverty, and how SCTs intervene in these processes. Meanwhile, a PhD student will undertake research with policy makers, focusing on Objective 3. Finally, workshops with representatives of agencies, NGOs and government will engage in further analysis of the findings to address Objective 4 and identify key policy lessons.