Reduce Household Vulnerability Research Articles

Analyzing the Impact of Government Subsidies on Household Welfare during Economic Shocks: A Case Study of Iran

The study evaluates the effectiveness of Iranian government subsidies for households by comparing the welfare impact of food price shocks with the subsidy payments they receive. This helps us assess the government's efforts to reduce poverty in Iran. The household cost data in 2020 was used to calculate compensated price elasticities using the Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System (QAIDS). Results showed negative and less than one own-price elasticities for all food items, with a sensitivity to changes in income greater than one for demand of cereals, cooking oil, and fruits. Then, compensated variations (CV) welfare index was used to evaluate the effectiveness of government support payments in reducing household vulnerability due to food price increases. The results showed that the CV fluctuates between 8.05-80.46 $ under different scenarios. In other words, consumers are in a worse situation in terms of welfare and their expenditure increases. The vulnerability index of low-income households, after applying different food price scenarios, is in the range of 1.46-14.67%, which is reduced to 1.35-14.53% by implementing the cash-targeted subsidy policy. In other words, the effectiveness of the government's subsidy policy of $19 per person could reduce the vulnerability of these households by only 0.14%.

The role of agroforestry systems for addressing climate change livelihood vulnerability of farmers of Northwestern Ethiopia

Farmers in Ethiopia have been vulnerable to climate change in recent decades. In the face of this change, farmers have managed agroforestry systems to maintain their livelihoods. However, studies exploring the role of agroforestry in reducing household vulnerability are lacking in Northwestern Ethiopia. The objectives of the study were to (i) investigate households’ livelihoods vulnerability to climate change in Northwestern Ethiopia; (iii) assess the role of agroforestry in mitigating the negative impacts of climate change on farmers livelihoods. Key informant interviews, in-depth interviews, household surveys (387), and focus group discussions were used to collect the data. Descriptive statistics, principal component analysis, the X2-test, and the t-test were run to analyze the data. The findings revealed that households are vulnerable to rising temperatures, rainfall variability, frost, disease and pests, erosion, hailstorms, price hikes, wildlife damage to crops, and health stress. Agroforestry non-practitioners had a higher livelihood vulnerability index (LVI) (0.42 ± 0.081) than practitioners (0.46 ± 0.079). The Livelihood Vulnerability-Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change Index (LVI-IPCC) showed that AF non-practitioners had a higher exposure (0.58), sensitivity (0.54) index, and a lower adaptive capacity index (0.44) than the exposure (0.34), sensitivity (0.38), and adaptive capacity index (0.51) of practitioners. Plant diversity, income level and diversity, livelihood activities, social network, and food security status of farmers were improved by agroforestry. Farmers were therefore less susceptible to adverse climate shocks. Thus, the AF system could be part of future adaptation and resilience programs that provide dependable tools to minimize households’ vulnerability to climate shocks. However, management guidelines, such as understanding local ecosystems, setting clear objectives, choosing suitable species, planning for diversity, considering the market, and regular maintenance and monitoring, are needed for agroforestry to improve its contribution.

Measuring household vulnerability to medical expenditure shock: method and its empirical application.

To investigate household vulnerability for inability to cope with medical expenditure shock, we propose a method of measuring household vulnerability to medical expenditure shock by allowing for the heteroscedasticity and dependence of medical expenditure shock and income shock. Using the data from China Health and Nutrition Survey, we estimate the vulnerability of Chinese households, and further investigate crucial characteristics associated with it by comparing the vulnerability levels among groups with different characteristics and an empirical regression with Shorrocks-Shapely decomposition of R squared. Our research shows that health status contributes most to the household vulnerability, and good health helps to reduce the household's vulnerability. Households with stable income and high-education have greater ability to cope with uncertain medical expenditure, and are less vulnerable. Medical insurance plays a limited role in reducing household vulnerability, and the specific type of medical insurance has little influence. All of these findings are conducive to identifying vulnerable households and designing policies to reduce the vulnerability of households.

Social protection and absorptive capacity: Disaster preparedness and social welfare policy in the United States

Climate change exacerbates drivers of impoverishment, necessitating a more robust evidence base to inform policy and action. Recent studies have examined how social protection programs tie into climate action and disaster risk reduction globally; however, this remains underexamined in high-income country contexts. Our study aims to address this gap by investigating the association between social protection and disaster preparedness in the United States. We hypothesize that reducing household vulnerability through welfare recipience builds long-term resilience and capacity for better risk-mitigation decisions. We examined how households prepare for a disaster and conceptualized disaster preparedness as a capability at the household level using nationally representative data from the American Housing Surveys 2017. The study employed multiple regression analyses and the Karlson/Holm/Breen method to decompose the total, direct, and indirect effects of welfare recipience on the association between household social vulnerabilities and disaster preparedness. On average, households scored 5.01 on a nine-item preparedness scale; higher preparedness was positively associated with higher income and education, a male household head, the presence of an older adult, and non-welfare recipience. Welfare recipience mediated the association of disaster preparedness with the presence of a person with a disability at home, socioeconomic status, and race. This analysis strengthens the hypothesis that welfare recipience could potentially mediate disaster preparedness capabilities among households, pointing to a probable shock absorber effect that can offset vulnerabilities experienced by communities.

Flood risk and household losses: Empirical findings from a rural community in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

This study evaluates the effects of household-level flood risk on post-flood losses in Pakistan. Pakistan experienced devastating flooding, leading to numerous fatalities, extensive destruction of homes, and millions of displaced or otherwise affected individuals. Using survey data from households in Chitral District, we apply indicators from the literature on exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity to generate actual vulnerability scores for households. We then determine household-level risk as a function of vulnerability and hazard. Finally, we employ Kruskal–Wallis one-way variance analysis to measure the association between household risk and flood impact in terms of both agricultural and non-agricultural losses. The findings indicate that loss due to floods is not a random function of nature's impact; instead, households with higher levels of risk also face higher agricultural and non-agricultural losses. These results emphasize the importance of addressing underlying risk factors to reduce household vulnerability rather than simply responding to post-crisis emergencies.

Can farmland transfer reduce vulnerability as expected poverty? Evidence from smallholder households in rural China

IntroductionExtant literature has extensively explored farmland transfer ‘s impacts, confirming its essential role in poverty alleviation. How-ever, most studies focus on poverty measures that exclusively emphasize current poverty status without adequately addressing the potential of falling into or remaining in poverty. Furthermore, the role of farmland transfer in helping the smallholder house-holds in rural areas appears to be underexamined in the literature.MethodsTo address this knowledge gap, this study investigates whether farmland transfer can reduce household vulnerability to poverty. A theoretical framework is developed to capture the mechanism by which farmland transfer has a vital role in smallholder households and impacts the probability of being poor in the future. The China Family Panel Studies Survey data set from 2010 to 2018 is used to explore this issue.Results and DiscussionThe results show that land transfer-out households are seemingly the most effective at reducing vulnerability, whereas the reduction effect is not obvious among transfer-in households. Specifically, the vulnerability of transfer-out households is reduced by about 39.52%. Furthermore, we analyze the reasons for heterogeneity in the poverty reduction effects and find that the key mechanism is on the labor resource allocation decision the heterogeneity of the effects of different types of income. Actually, for transfer-out households, farmland transfer can increase the probability of migrant work and business opportunities, as well as the labor input for non-agricultural production, which helps to reduce vulnerability to poverty. On the other hand, for transfer-in households, they will invest more labor in agricultural production and increase agricultural inputs, whereas increased inputs to agricultural production do not actually reduce vulnerability to poverty. Transferring out land can significantly increase farmers’ wage income and thus compensate for the loss of farm income; however, the increase in farm income generated by transferring in land roughly offsets the loss of wage income for farmers. This study provides a new research perspective on the long-term effects of farmland transfer on rural poverty.

Disaster Psychology and Psychological Adaptation of Disasters: Evidence From Riverine Islands (Char) of Rural Bangladesh

Natural hazards disrupt the social-ecological system, causing much suffering, death, injury, and devastation of property and the environment. This study explores the factors influencing the disaster psychology and psychological adaptation of people living in disaster-vulnerable areas in Bangladesh. Data have been collected from 100 households in Bangladesh’s riverine island areas (char) of northern Bangladesh. Several criteria have been used to measure char dwellers’ disaster psychology (vulnerability concern, factor, and intensity) and psychological adaptation (weakness concern and emotional response). This study reveals that char dwellers perceived several hazards like floods (100%), riverbank erosion (83%), drought (29%), and earthquakes (14%). It is also found that females (88%) are more concerned about earthquakes than males (12%). The key vulnerability factors in the char areas are geographic position (100%), no access to migration (75%), resources (76%), housing (83%), training (18%), and alternative livelihood (24%). Flood and drought are identified as the most destructive hazards in char areas. Most household heads also felt anxiety (88%), fear (54%), helplessness, sadness, and anger due to natural hazards. The government should implement a context-specific disaster management plan to reduce household vulnerability and create livelihood opportunities in char areas to enhance char dwellers’ psychological resilience against disasters.

Vulnerability and Clientelism

This study argues that economic vulnerability causes citizens to participate in clientelism, a phenomenon with various pernicious consequences. To examine how reduced vulnerability affects citizens’ participation in clientelism, we employ two exogenous shocks to vulnerability. First, we designed a randomized control trial to reduce household vulnerability: our development intervention constructed residential water cisterns in drought-prone areas of Brazil. Second, we exploit rainfall shocks. We find that reducing vulnerability significantly decreases requests for private goods from politicians, especially among citizens likely to be in clientelist relationships. Moreover, reducing vulnerability decreases votes for incumbent mayors, who typically have more resources for clientelism. (JEL D72, H41, I38, O12, O17, Q54)

Can microcredit reduce vulnerability to poverty? Evidence from rural Vietnam

AbstractExtant literature has extensively explored microcredit's impacts, confirming its essential role in poverty alleviation. However, most studies focus on poverty measures that exclusively emphasize current poverty status without adequately addressing the potential of falling into or remaining in poverty. Furthermore, the role of credit services in helping the poor in rural areas appears to be underexamined in the literature. To address this knowledge gap, this study investigates whether rural microcredit can reduce household vulnerability to poverty. A theoretical framework is developed to capture the mechanism by which microcredit borrowing has a vital role in household businesses and impacts the probability of being poor in the future. The Vietnam Access to Resources Household Survey data set from 2008 to 2016 is used to explore this issue. The findings indicate that rural Vietnam's access to microcredit significantly reduces vulnerability to poverty. Moreover, better‐off households are seemingly the most effective at using microcredit, whereas the opposite is found among worse‐off households. These results are found to be robust using the propensity score matching method.

‘I lost my job suddenly, but I was prepared’: the significance of urban and peri-urban agriculture in Benin City, Nigeria

ABSTRACT In the rapidly growing cities of the Global South, and Africa in particular, urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) is increasingly recognized as a survival strategy both by researchers and international development organizations. While UPA is well researched, direct links to economic crisis and class variations in participation have only received limited attention in the Nigerian context. This study focuses on Benin City, the second largest city in Nigeria’s southern oil producing region, where repeated and unpredictable fluctuations in oil prices have significant implications for livelihoods. The paper discusses the results of field-based data collected using qualitative research methods (observation, in-depth interviews and questionnaire surveys) in Benin City, Southern Nigeria, where there is a dearth of published material on the practice of UPA . The paper reveals that in the context of unpredictable and frequent exposures to economic shocks, households at all socio-economic levels depend significantly on food production activities, not only for their immediate survival, but as a means of reducing household vulnerability and building resilience against future shocks.

Smart Management of Malnutrition Using Local Foods: A Sustainable Initiative for Developing Countries

Malnutrition is one of the major challenges the developing world is currently facing, whether it is caused by climate change, terrorism and conflict, or demographic shifts. Poverty is the main cause of malnutrition in this part of the world, and no progress is possible without the alleviation of poverty to reduce malnutrition. Reducing household vulnerability and increasing household resilience is the pathway to sustainable malnutrition management. Malnutrition has been a major threat to the health and development of children in developing countries, presenting as high levels of micronutrient deficiencies, stunting, and global acute malnutrition. The rates of malnutrition of all forms are above the thresholds accepted by the WHO in some regions. To this end, the resilience program on achieving nutrition in a developing country through at-home learning activities for nutritional rehabilitation and dietary promotion (known as FARN) reported, in this case, successful results from both statements from beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries on the reduction and management of malnutrition in their health centers. FARN activity encourages the consumption of locally available foods not only to eradicate malnutrition but also to protect the ecosystem and sustainable nutrition security. This is much like the saying, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime” to the vulnerable people; parents' knowledge of their child's nutritional status and the use of local-based foods diets showed improvement, which is proof of the impact of the resilience program. It can be concluded that the resilience program through its activities at the level of the selected community significantly affected the factors and degree of persistence of malnutrition and the level of resilience of the populations. Thus, the FARN program showed resounding success in its ability to promote sustainable malnutrition management.

Household diversification and market dependence: understanding vulnerability in rural West Africa

ABSTRACT Understanding the empirical relationships among three parameters is necessary to reduce household vulnerability: diversification, market dependence and economic security. A cross-sectional study of these relationships was conducted in five areas with histories of cash cropping in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and northern Nigeria. Household diversification was found to be positively associated with economic security while negatively associated with household dependence on markets. Moreover, individuals in market oriented households are more likely to adopt individualistic orientations. These findings confirm a positive role of diversification but raise concerns about how markets affect the prospects for maintaining or reducing household vulnerability.

Pattern of household vulnerability to desertification in Yobe state, Nigeria

The study evaluates the degree and pattern of household vulnerability to desertification in Yobe State, Nigeria. Making the right decisions and efficient resources allocation to reduce household vulnerability to desertification requires an understanding of the factors that make a society vulnerable to environmental change. Strategies to reduce the impact of desertification in Nigeria have often been without understanding the spatial pattern of household vulnerability to the hazard. The study used the Integrated Household Vulnerability Index to proffer a solution to household vulnerability to desertification in the study area. The indicators of vulnerability (exposure, adaptive capacity, and sensitivity), were calculated to determine the pattern of household vulnerability to desertification. The study adopted an experimental survey design and the method utilized for this study was a questionnaire administrated to 400 households in the study area. The household vulnerability levels identified were 4, which include very high vulnerability, high vulnerability, low vulnerability and very low vulnerability. The spatial pattern of the household vulnerability levels in the study area tends to increase northward and decreases southward. The spatial pattern is due to a higher percentage of the total households with more wealth, technology and infrastructure to cope with desertification in the southern part than in the northern part of the study area. Therefore, the need to integrate the measures of desertification adaptation options into the development process, based on the spatial pattern of household vulnerability. These measures are poverty reduction, alternative sources of energy; enhance food security through good agricultural practices and development of cattle ranches.

Vulnerability to Natural Disaster and Welfare Effect: A Case Study of Flood Risk in Vietnam’s North Central Region

This article investigates the impact of flood risk on vulnerability and welfare at the household level in Vietnam. The analytical sample is taken from a household survey conducted in a north central Vietnam community through a three-stage stratified random sampling method. The propensity score matching approach is employed to compare various welfare indicators between flooded and non-flooded households. This study finds that flooding results in significant income losses and imposes higher costs of living, especially housing costs. The two types of households are vulnerable, implying that other natural disasters or socio-economic disadvantages may have adverse effects on households’ livelihoods. The insignificant effect of floods on vulnerability indicates that the flooded households can cope with floods to some extent. However, contrary to family support, formal coping strategies are insufficient or ineffective at reducing household vulnerability to floods.

Assessing vulnerability for inhabitants of Dhaka City considering flood-hazard exposure

Global flood hazard is gradually increasing. Though it is impossible to avoid them, losses and damage of hazards (e.g., floods, cyclones, and earthquakes) could be efficiently reduced by reducing household vulnerability with appropriate measures. This study aims to quantitatively measure the household vulnerability of flood hazards as a mitigation tool. It also proposed a unique approach to quantify flood-hazard household vulnerability, and shows its application in the flood prone city of Dhaka as an example case. Data were collected from both slum and non-slum areas to cover the entire urban habitat, and to compare their level of flood vulnerability. A total of 300 households were surveyed by structured questionnaire on the basis of five factors (economic, social, environmental, structural, and institutional) of flood vulnerability. The analytical hierarchy process (AHP) was applied to measure individual household vulnerability scores by using the relative weightage of variables and indicators with proper standardisation. Analytical results demonstrated that 63.06% slum and 20.02% non-slum households were highly vulnerable to floods. In addition, this paper determined and assessed responsible factors for household flood vulnerability in Dhaka. For structural vulnerability, results exhibited that 82% of slum households were highly vulnerable, and 95.3% of non-slum households were moderately vulnerable. Socially, 67.3% of slum and 78.7% of non-slum households were moderately and low-vulnerable. The majority of slum and non-slum households (84% and 59.3%, respectively) showed high and moderate vulnerability with respect to economic vulnerability. Moreover, 69.3% of slum and 65.3% of nonslum household institutional vulnerability levels were high. Of slum inhabitants, 63.3% were environmentally at high risk, and 78% of non-slum habitats were in the low-vulnerability category. However, as an effective tool to measure location-specific vulnerability, it is applicable for the measuring vulnerability of other cities in the world with proper customisation. On the basis of this study, future research could be conducted with more factors, variables, and indicators of human vulnerability to natural or artificial hazards/disasters. Future work may provide a better reflection of the vulnerability status of single/multiple hazard(s)/disaster(s).

Renter Protection and Entrepreneurship

We examine whether renter protection encourages new business creation by reducing household vulnerability in home-rental markets. Passages of city-level just cause eviction ordinance in California are associated with a 9.6\% increase in the number of new small businesses, and a higher proportion of female and racial minority business owners. Local demand shocks and landlord investments are unlikely to explain the results. New firms created post passage tend to survive in the long run and perform no worse than other firms. Our evidence suggests that policies that protect renters against wrongful evictions benefit local economy by promoting self-employment and job creation.

Review on Role of Home Garden Agroforestry Practices to Improve Livelihood of Small Scale Farmers and Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation

Agroforestry is one of the most conspicuous land use systems across landscapes and agro ecological zones in Africa. Some of the components of Agroforestry systems are; home garden agroforestry, alley cropping, forest farming, wind break, river banks, park land, crop land trees and buffer zones agroforestry practices. Climate change impacts by complex weather-related phenomena have threatened agricultural and forest ecosystems and the livelihood of agricultural and local communities. Agroforestry has an important role in climate change adaptation through diversified land-use practices, sustainable livelihoods, sources of income, enhanced forest and agricultural productivity and reduced weather-related production losses, which enhance resilience against climate impacts. Like few other land use options, agroforestry has real potential to contribute to food security, climate change mitigation and adaptation, while preserving and strengthening the environmental resource base of Africa’s rural landscapes. It has a key role to play in landscape-scale mitigation schemes under the REDD+or AFOLU (Agriculture, Forestry and other land uses) concepts. Home garden agroforestry system indicates that adaptation and mitigation to climate change will largely depend on the increased resilience of both agroforestry systems and of local management capacity. Despite less attention has been given to tree based land use option, agroforestry has played a major role in reducing household vulnerability to shocking. Smallholder farmers have already started mainstreaming tree based land use system as resilience to social needs because the poor are more exposed to change; Agroforestry is one of best risk aversion option to make them move out of food insecurity. Generally, agroforestry systems readily bundle both mitigation and adaptation strategies and provide several pathways to securing food security for poor farmers, while contributing to climate change mitigation. Agroforestry should attract more attention in global agendas on climate adaptation and mitigation because of its positive social and environmental impacts.

Can health insurance reduce household vulnerability? Evidence from Viet Nam

Abstract This study provides new evidence on the impact of health insurance coverage on household vulnerability using the Vietnam Access to Resources Household Surveys (VARHS) for 2010 and 2012. We apply propensity score matching to address the non-random selection of households into health insurance status. The VARHS data allow us to include risk preference as a predictor of health insurance propensity, an important source of endogeneity between health insurance coverage and vulnerability. We estimate that health insurance helps rural households in Vietnam reduce the idiosyncratic component of utility loss by 81 per cent and the probability of becoming poor by 19 per cent. Our results are robust to alternative statistical specifications. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper measuring the impact of health insurance coverage on household ex-ante vulnerability. Our findings suggest that expanding access, reducing costs and improving efficiency in health care would have big benefits of reducing vulnerability for the poor.

Internal Migration and Vulnerability to Poverty in Tanzania

This paper investigates internal migration and vulnerability to poverty in Tanzania. It examines whether migration reduced household vulnerability to poverty for a panel of households from the Kagera region over the period 2004-2010. The dataset allows the analysis of two samples of households: those with the same head in the periods considered and an enlarged network of split-off households. The potential endogeneity of migration is controlled by both matching methods and an exogenous variation. A severe drought in 2008-09 affected the areas of the country with a bimodal rain season, but not those with a unimodal rain season. It is thus possible to study the heterogeneity of migrants with respect to an unanticipated shock in the region of destination. The evidence shows that migration reduced vulnerability to basic needs and to food consumption poverty for families which experienced migration to unimodal regions. The results are consistent with migration as a risk management strategy by households.

Do conditional cash transfers reduce household vulnerability? Evidence from PROGRESA-Oportunidades in the 2000s

Abstract A number of researchers and policymakers have revealed the short- and medium-term impacts of conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs; however, accumulation of full-scale evaluations of their long-term impact is ongoing. To contribute to filling the gap, this study empirically examines the vulnerability of rural households in Mexico and how CCT has recently impacted them. Using two Mexican rural household panel datasets from the 2000s, I adopt Kurosaki’s (2006) version of Townsend’s (1994) risk-sharing model with instrumental variable methods, which enables a greater focus on household welfare decline. The empirical results confirm that CCT played a certain role in reducing household vulnerability in the 2000s; however considering the situation after the global crisis in 2008 and the exact mechanism through which this occurs remains subject to further examination.