Coping with flood: role of institutions in Bangladesh

The article examines the coping strategies that rural households adopted during the 1998 flood in Bangladesh and assesses its impact on household welfare, including coping and vulnerability. Both vulnerability and poverty have in general declined in Bangladesh. Yet, 60% of rural households adopted a coping of one type or another and about half of rural households were both vulnerable as well as found to adopt any coping mechanism during the 1998 flood. Household-level panel data analysis confirms that the flood reduced both consumption and asset, and forced many households to adopt some coping mechanisms to mitigate the adverse effects of flood. Consequently, natural disaster such as flooding increases households' vulnerability to poverty. However, post-flood bumper crop production and operation of targeted programs such as microfinance helped compensate the losses of flood. Copyright 2007 International Association of Agricultural Economists.