Income Generation, Informality and Poverty in Urban Turkey

This article seeks to examine the key sources of poor urban households’ relative success (or failure) in reducing poverty by income generation activities. The data is drawn from interviews with 17 low income households randomly selected from an informal gecekondu settlement located in the periphery of the Turkish capital. Contrary to the dominant viewpoint, which attributes success to having fewer dependants or more resources, it is shown here that success depends more on the benefit delivery capacity of resources accessible to the households and this depends largely on wider structural factors. Informal employment is found to constitute one key structural factor, which limits households’ chances of success to a greater extent than formal employment not only through condemning them to low pay but also through imposing more restrictions upon their access to state welfare.