Geographical poverty core formation in a spatial Solow growth model

This paper develops the concept of poverty core, a novel framework that extends the traditional notion of poverty traps by incorporating the dynamics of irreversibility and complete capital depletion. While poverty traps describe self-reinforcing cycles of deprivation that hinder economic mobility, a poverty core emerges when an already vulnerable system experiences a random exogenous shock—such as a natural disaster, armed conflict, financial collapse, or health crisis—that destroys natural, physical, and human capital beyond the threshold required for recovery. Unlike poverty traps, which may be escaped through gradual investment or policy intervention, a poverty core represents an absorbing state of destitution where normal economic mechanisms are no longer sufficient to restore livelihoods.