Measuring Household Vulnerability in the Context of Poverty Education: Evidence from Uganda

While it has long been demonstrated (Rosenzweig and Binswanger, 1993; Banerjee and Newman, 1994) that considerations of risk and uncertainty are key to understand the dynamics leading to and perpetuating poverty, it is only recently that policy makers have taken a more active interest in trying to incorporate considerations of risk and vulnerability into their strategies to reduce poverty (Christiaensen and Subbarao, 2001). The aim of this paper is to quantify the severity of vulnerability by generating the first quantitative assessment of vulnerability in Uganda, a country at the forefront of poverty analysis. The findings support the hypothesis that during the past decade, alongside sharp reductions in poverty, vulnerability to poverty in Uganda declined from 57% in 1992/93 to 25% in 1999/00. Such results highlight the importance for policy makers to distinguish between the effective implementation of poverty-prevention and poverty-reduction programmes.