Beyond Ideologies: Creating Wealth for the Poor

Poor people work hard and are the most motivated to move out of poverty. Yet pervasive inequality in opportunity, agency, organization and human development prevents them from getting fair returns and keeps them trapped in poverty. The demise of the Washington Consensus has created a need for new consensus that supports poor people's direct participation in economic growth on fairer terms. This paper proposes creating wealth from below as a new strategy to support market based approaches that are value based and build on poor people's strengths. It requires breaking through the ideological mindsets of state vs. civil society vs. private sector. This paper uses the framework of opportunity structure and agency as the two building blocks to understand the obstacles to economic empowerment in an unequal world. Opportunity structure consists of the institutional climate and the deeper political and social structures that govern the interaction between poor people and other actor...