The Vicious Circle of Social Exclusion : A qualitative study on poverty alleviation in Rwanda

In the discourse of poverty, there is no scientific consensus on how to measure poverty. In the theory of social exclusion, analyzing poverty goes beyond traditional economic measures of poverty. The theory of social exclusion implies that there is a downward spiral of multidimensional deprivation, creating a vicious circle of social exclusion. According to Jeffrey Sachs, people living in extreme poverty are too poor to accumulate resources to escape poverty, resulting in a poverty trap. The only way to get out of the poverty trap is through investment from outside actors. The aim of this study is to understand what happens with a vicious circle of social exclusion when an outside actor provides such an investment, in this case with a cow. The results show that investment from outside actors do not disrupt the vicious circle of social exclusion, it is rather a process of which the behavior of the circle changes. When a cow is introduced in the respondent’s lives, they receive resources that help to break unemployment, poverty and social isolation. After introducing the investment from an outside actor, the respondents dispose resources that contributes to inclusion in labor market, monetary resources and social relations, and the cow helps to create a circle of social inclusion