TRAPS: a systems view

A "trap" is a set of processes, resources and conditions that is easier to fall into that it is to get out of. For the environment and economy, there are situtations in which the relative rates of the processes and the feedbacks trap people into poverty, inefficient farming, and other examples.

More technically, a trap can be the result of a bifurcation point that separates two stable regimes.

For example, Banerjee and Duflo (2011) describe the poverty trap graphically. In the "poverty zone" people don't have enough income to invest in opportunities to increase income in the future, in fact there are factors that tends to drive down their ability to earn more in the future. Thus if their current income below a threshold (or bifurcation point) they are trapped in poverty. See the figure below.

Some factors that lead to their inability to increase their income are:

nutrition based poverty trap -

can't afford to buy enough food to support the metabolism that the hard work requires in order to earn enought money

depending on the wage earned per unit energy expended and the cost of food, this person could be in a trap

Malaria, or sickness based poverty trap

Population growth trap - low economic development for a country