SAGA Proposal: Risk, Vulnerability and Poverty Dynamics

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SAGA Research Program:

1.2.3 Risk, Vulnerability and Poverty Dynamics

Perhaps the most interesting finding of the recent surge in qualitative poverty analysis is the emphasis that poor people place on vulnerability when they define their own poverty or food insecurity (Kanbur and Squire 2001; Narayan et.al. 2000a, 2000b; Barrett, forthcoming (a)). Time and again, the risk of falling into poverty (measured in many possible dimensions) receives as much attention as deprivation itself in conversations with the poor. Given the importance that poor people place on vulnerability and the relative scarcity of research on it, we see this as an important area for potential research topics in the Cooperative Agreement.

People everywhere face risks, but these risks are larger for poor, agrarian economies, and in tropical ecologies (Sachs 2000). In addition, the poor have fewer means for dealing with the risks that they face. African economies remain mostly agrarian, and its soils, meteorology, and hydrology, including low rates of irrigation, make agricultural yields especially unstable. There is also an important gender dimension to vulnerability. Women’s risk assessments differ systematically from men’s, emphasizing issues of health and violence far more frequently (Narayan et.al. 2000a; Smith, Barrett and Box 2001). Women typically bear greater risk with respect to policy-related productivity shocks (Assié-Lumumba 1995; Due 1991; Gladwin 1991; Doss 1996; Barrett, Sherlund, and Adesina 2001) and have more difficult access to livelihood strategies that limit downside risk exposure (Barrett, Bezuneh, Clay and Reardon 2000, Newman and Canagarajah 2000). There is thus a particular need for policy-oriented research that identifies vulnerability in a gender-sensitive fashion.

Focus group interviews in Africa make clear that there are two important differences between Africans’ conception of vulnerability and the definition of risk as variability in outcomes found in the economics literature. First, while uncertainty clearly matters, it is not overall variability that defines vulnerability, but downside risk (Smith, Barrett, and Box 2001). Research on poverty dynamics shows much movement in and out of poverty over time (Hoddinott and Baulch 2000), a phenomenon of which Africans are clearly cognizant. Even those who are not currently poor face a non-trivial risk of becoming poor, and they define that risk as vulnerability.

*In retrospect, and given the huge literature on the economics of uncertainty, it is surprising that economists, the main practitioners of more traditional quantitative poverty analysis, have not appreciated the importance of vulnerability. This is a good example of the benefits that could come from combining qualitative and quantitative methods (and practitioners). See section 1.3.1

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