The role of social norms in ending extreme poverty

Image: Sarvdeep Singh Arora for Oxford Policy Management, Sitapur, India. (2023)

Social norms are implicit or informal rules embedded within the institutions of a given society or group. They are influenced by beliefs, economic circumstances, political discourses, and historical factors. Social norms provide order and predictability to society, they also reflect power structures and often reinforce them to the detriment of a particular group. Classifying social norms as ‘good,’ ‘bad,’ or ‘harmful’ is both conceptually challenging and subject to parochial bias. However, we can be confident that social norms are harmful when they result in net welfare losses, as compared to the welfare that would result from their absence.

While the relationship between poverty and harmful social norms seems intuitively clear, this link is complex and often contested.  Lack of research means we have a poor understanding of the channels through which specific norms affect poverty, and vice versa, and there is a lack of evidence on how addressing harmful social norms could accelerate ending extreme poverty. For this reason, it is crucial that more energy is put into studying the role social norms play in hampering efforts to achieve ‘last mile’ poverty reduction.

Although harmful social norms vary from one context to another, they are known to impact some group characteristics across most or all societies across the world. These characteristics include: gender; ethnicity, race, caste and religion; migration status; disability status; and sexual and gender identities. Crucially, the risk of impoverishment is greatest when an individual or a household experiences discrimination or exclusion due to multiple forms of harmful social norms.

Harmful social norms are strongly associated with the intergenerational transmission of poverty. Inherited traits, such as being from a particular ethnic group, being born in a particular place, or belonging to the social class of one’s parents, can result in children being born into, and thereby inheriting, poverty. People affected by harmful social norms can often find themselves leaning into harmful norms under economic or social pressure – for instance the knowledge that it is beneficial for a child to attend school may be overshadowed by norms that condone child marriage or child labour.

There is a two-way relationship between harmful social norms and poverty. While harmful norms can trap groups in chronic poverty, they can also reinforce negative perceptions about these groups. If people living in poverty become categorised as ‘the poor’ there is a danger that poverty could be viewed as an inherent characteristic rather than a potentially temporary state, leading to the belief that poverty is a trap that cannot be escaped. Ironically, donor and government interventions can inadvertently reinforce these norms when they distinguish ‘the poor’ from the ‘non-poor’ when targeting beneficiaries.

Efforts to address harmful social norms are often piecemeal, with some governments and donors tackling attempts to deal with, or work through, social norms onto the remit of certain ministries or departments (e.g. Ministries of ‘women’s affairs’). There is rarely any meaningful commitment attached to these efforts in the form of political and legal actions or financing and mainstreaming often occurs organisationally while failing to translate into practice.

While research into effective strategies for reducing poverty through addressing social norms is patchy, and conclusive findings relatively scarce, there have been some studies which show that targeted programmes focussing on harmful social norms can lead to meaningful change.

Cash or in-kind transfers have been found to have some of the largest effects on women’s ownership of assets, credit, and income. They also have a significant impact on preventing child marriage, alongside interventions to support girls’ schooling.

India’s political, educational, and labour market reservation for scheduled castes and tribes has been associated with reduced poverty among these groups. A meta-analysis of programmes to support the participation and accountability of marginalised groups in decision-making around social protection also found small positive effects on livelihoods and economic well-being.

The SASA! Initiative, a social norms community mobilisation programme promoting changes to attitudes and behaviours around gender, violence and HIV infection, has been implemented in around 30 countries. A randomised control trial of this programme found that it was associated with a decrease in the acceptance and incidence of intimate partner violence among women and men in Uganda. Likewise, a review of women’s empowerment programming in fragile contexts, found sensitisation campaigns had a positive effect on women’s attitudes towards claiming their rights and being empowered, though they found no effects on reduced harmful social norms such as violence towards partners.

At times, deeply embedded harmful social norms can block the success of interventions which target them. For instance, while quotas have had significant positive effects on women’s political representation, transformational impact can be limited by embedded power dynamics. An example is Rwanda, which leads the world in women’s representation in parliament, but where misogyny and gender discrimination continue to limit women’s agency and decision making.

Such conclusive findings are the exception rather than the rule. This is likely due to a lack of focus on the disaggregated effects on groups impacted by harmful social norms in evaluations, along with a dearth of research into long term outcomes. Examples include studies looking at disability and harmful social norms which often refer to persons with disabilities rather than disaggregating results by disability status. Similarly, evaluations of measures to increase female involvement in polities often measure participation as an outcome rather than any transformational change.

Harmful social norms that lead to the impoverishment of a particular group tend to be deeply embedded in social structures and are necessarily difficult to change. However, they must be addressed if extreme poverty is to be tackled. A first step is to ensure that pivotal social norms have been correctly identified and are being targeted when designing poverty alleviation programmes. Additionally, a long-term approach must be taken when evaluating these programmes in order to gain a clear-eyed analysis of their potential success.

Read the social norms thematic paper here.

About the author: 

Dr. Amanda Lenhardt is a Senior adviser for the DEEP research programme. She teaches at Kings college, London within the Department of International Development.

She has more than a decade of policy and research experience in the development sector, previously holding positions at the Overseas Development Institute, Save the Children, SOAS, and independent consultancies with the World Bank, USAID and the International Rescue Committee. She has primary research experience in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya and Tanzania.