Investing strongly in smallholder agriculture and in policies to improve the quality as well as the number of jobs created is one of the core three policies identified in the 2014 Chronic Poverty Report. Generating decent employment is considered one of the most effective approach to challenge chronic poverty, stop impoverishment and sustain escapes from extreme poverty. This is also the main focus of the recently released report “Wage labor, agriculture-based economics and pathways out of poverty” by the Leveraging Economic Opportunities (LEO) project for which CPAN has offered advice, and for which the CPAN “Employment Policy Guide: Working out of chronic poverty” was a source.

As the report remarks “for a long time, ‘poverty has been divorced from labor’. Yet, more and more evidence is emerging that labor lies at the core of poor people’s struggle to make ends meet and to escape from poverty”. This report provides a stock-take on the current literature on employment and pathways out of poverty, with a special focus on rural wage labor.

LEO is currently holding a series of multi-week e-consultations, to unpack some of the issues explored in the paper. Additionally, the project has also developed an engaging infographic to help explaining and making people more and more familiar with the issue.