Income disparity, intergenerational transmission of poverty and income traps are important topics in economicsocial development. On the basis of sorting out research on income mobility measurement, povertytrap theory and social innovation, this paper regards the poverty trap as a lowincome equilibrium with interlocking multiple mechanisms, and puts forward a socialinnovation framework for escaping poverty centred on crosslevel agency: starting from neurocognitive processes, individual agency, relational agency to collective/transformative agency, opportunity structures are changed through empowerment, resource mobilisation, power redistribution and institutional/normative change, thereby weakening the selfreinforcing mechanisms of poverty. This paper further proposes a research agenda combining neurocognition, behavioural experiments and crosslevel mixedmethod research, so as to provide a testable theoretical framework and empirical path for breaking poverty traps.
Keywords
income mobility,poverty trap,social innovation,agency,cross level
How to Cite
Wang, N. (2026). Income Mobility, Poverty Traps and Social Innovation. Asia Journal of Social Innovation and Development, 1(3), 92–106. Retrieved from https://www.ajsid.org/index.php/pub/article/view/58
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