What differences do resources make? : a longitudinal study of household responses to poverty in a Gecekondu settlement in Ankara, Turkey

The aim of the thesis is to explore the socio-economic behaviour patterns households develop in response to poverty and to understand why some household responses are more successful in reducing deprivation than others. The literature on poverty (absolute and relative) and household responses to it in the third world and in the developed world is reviewed. Deprivation is defined to cover the monetary, consumption and work dimensions and also takes into account household members' perceptions of poverty. The idea of household survival strategy is rejected in favour of the concept of household responses which are grouped into four main patterns: income generation, income allocation, consumption and investment-insurance. A resource-based model in which the elements of the household resource portfolio are built mainly upon Bourdieu's three forms of capital and the idea of entitlements is developed to understand these patterns and their effects on deprivation.

The research involves a longitudinal study in April and October 2002. It is based on separate interviews with both partners of 17 households chosen by random selection from a gecekondu (squatter) settlement in Ankara. An income threshold was used and households were selected controlling for household size, structure and life cycle stage, and included both Alevi and Sunni religious groups. Analyses are presented of the whole sample and of two individual households. It is shown that what is crucial for household success is not so much the range but the benefit delivery capacity of the resources (e.g. social capital) available to households to devise their responses. The key differences between households are found to be related to their access to welfare services, which depends on employment status, and to their entitlements to gecekondu redevelopment. Intra-household income-pooling is generally shown to be collective in nature which means that this feature does not explain differences in household deprivation.