Bringing context to poverty in rural Rwanda: Added value and challenges of mixed method approaches

This chapter contributes to the way poverty is defined, measured and researched. Attempts to measure poverty in Rwanda, from consistent, objective indicators like the multidimensional poverty index to more subjective and context-specific efforts like participatory poverty assessments, are critically analysed and found to be inadequate representations, which overlook important social and political determinants of poverty. An integrated mixed methods approach is applied to assess wellbeing from the perspective of rural Rwandans, attending to subjective and relational dimensions as well as material factors. This more grounded, holistic approach to poverty serves to reconcile the polarised views about the effectiveness of Rwandan development and highlights how such research can inform poverty-alleviation policies. Some of the persistent barriers to mainstreaming such approaches are also realistically appraised.