in their social relationships are more likely to have children who are in the correct school grade for their age.

# **3.  The Peruvian Context**

According to the last National Households Survey (2010), Peru is a country where 35 percent of the population is poor and 10 percent is extremely poor.<sup>7</sup> There are important geographical disparities across regions and between urban and rural areas. In 2010, about 54 percent of rural population were living in poverty against 19 percent of urban population. Similarly looking at the three climatic zones, in the Amazonian jungle ( _selva_ ) the poverty rate was 37 percent, and in the highlands ( _sierra_ ) 49 percent of the population were poor and 20 percent were extremely poor. The poverty rate was 18 percent in the Pacific Coast ( _costa_ ), which is the richest part of the country, where just 2 percent of the population were extremely poor. Poverty is highly correlated with a low level of education. In 2010, more than 55 percent of the poor population had no education or just primary education.

As expected, poverty particularly affects the most vulnerable segments of population and in particular children. In the period 2000-2009 about 8 percent of newborns had a low birth weight and 30 percent of Peruvian children under 5 years old were stunted (WHO, 2010) with strong disparities between rural (44 percent) and urban areas (16 percent) (INEI, 2008).<sup>8</sup> The Peruvian context is particularly interesting to study social capital. The country has a long-standing tradition of social participation. The bloody wave of terrorism by the armed group called “Shining Path” ( _Sendero Luminoso_ ), which shook up the country in the 1980s, boosted the rise of spontaneous organizations at the community level, especially but not exclusively, in rural areas where terrorism was stronger (Wiig, 2005). In this period which lasted over 10 years, the “Committees of Self Defence” (or _rondas_ ) was created to defend communities from the threat of terrorism. When the terrorism ended, it left behind an infrastructure of community organizations and a strong sense of community together with the instinctive response to draw together in times of crisis. Subsequently, diverse social grass-roots organisations start emerging to fight poverty or tackle other issues. Most of those organizations were and still are run by women. In the sample used for the present analysis, the average age of the mothers is about 27 years old. At the peak of terrorism they were around 10 years old, and their mothers cooperated during the war, and after they had to organize the reconstruction and reconciliation within the communities. Their mothers were involved in the first community organizations after the terrorism and they were able to pass onto them the value of solidarity and cooperation within the community.

During the years of terrorism and the subsequent economic crisis many health centers were closed

> 7 In 2010 the poverty line is estimated to be about 264 Nuevos soles (about 98 US dollars) per month per capita and extreme poverty is considered under 149 Nuevos Soles (about 55 US dollars) per month per capita. For more details about the definition of poverty and extreme poverty, see the website of the Peruvian National Institute of Statistics (INEI), http://www.inei.gob.pe/

> 8 According with the World Health Organization (WHO), a child has a low birth weight if the birth weight is lower than 2.5 kg. A child is stunted if it has a weight-for-age or a height-for-age less than -2 standard deviations of the WHO Child Growth Standards median) among children aged 0-5 years (http://www.who.int).

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