IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/oxf/wpaper/229.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Measuring Individual Vulnerability

Author

Listed:
  • Cesar Calvo
  • Stefan Dercon

Abstract

Standard poverty analysis makes statements about deprivation after the veil of uncertainty has been lifted. This implies that there is no meaningful role for risk as part of an assessment of potentially low states of well-being. In this paper, we introduce a concept of vulnerability, as a threat of poverty, with downside risk at its core. More specifically, we define a vulnerability measure as an assessment of the magnitude of the threat of poverty, measured ex-ante, before uncertainty is resolved. We describe the welfare-economic foundations for desirable properties of a vulnerability measure and assess to what extent some measures used in empirical work abide by them. We also present two families of measures that are fully consistent with our axiomatic approach.

Suggested Citation

  • Cesar Calvo & Stefan Dercon, 2005. "Measuring Individual Vulnerability," Economics Series Working Papers 229, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:oxf:wpaper:229
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:68e540fb-c201-4b39-9773-ff77f199d520
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Chris Elbers & Jan Willem Gunning & Bill Kinsey, 2007. "Growth and Risk: Methodology and Micro Evidence," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 21(1), pages 1-20.
    2. Luc J. Christiaensen & Kalanidhi Subbarao, 2005. "Towards an Understanding of Household Vulnerability in Rural Kenya," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 14(4), pages 520-558, December.
    3. Amin, Sajeda & Rai, Ashok S. & Topa, Giorgio, 2003. "Does microcredit reach the poor and vulnerable? Evidence from northern Bangladesh," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(1), pages 59-82, February.
    4. Atkinson, A B, 1987. "On the Measurement of Poverty," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(4), pages 749-764, July.
    5. Foster, James & Greer, Joel & Thorbecke, Erik, 1984. "A Class of Decomposable Poverty Measures," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(3), pages 761-766, May.
    6. Ravallion, Martin, 1988. "Expected Poverty under Risk-Induced Welfare Variability," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 98(393), pages 1171-1182, December.
    7. Ethan Ligon & Laura Schechter, 2003. "Measuring Vulnerability," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(486), pages 95-102, March.
    8. Sen, Amartya K, 1976. "Poverty: An Ordinal Approach to Measurement," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 44(2), pages 219-231, March.
    9. Bourguignon, Francois & Goh, Chor-ching & Kim, Dae Il, 2004. "Estimating individual vulnerability to poverty with pseudo-panel data," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3375, The World Bank.
    10. Asep Suryahadi & Sudarno Sumarto, 2003. "Poverty and Vulnerability in Indonesia Before and After the Economic Crisis," Asian Economic Journal, East Asian Economic Association, vol. 17(1), pages 45-64, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mauricio Gallardo, 2018. "Identifying Vulnerability To Poverty: A Critical Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(4), pages 1074-1105, September.
    2. Duclos, Jean-Yves & Araar, Abdelkrim & Giles, John, 2010. "Chronic and transient poverty: Measurement and estimation, with evidence from China," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(2), pages 266-277, March.
    3. Cesar Calvo & Stefan Dercon, 2013. "Vulnerability to individual and aggregate poverty," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 41(4), pages 721-740, October.
    4. Stefan Dercon (QEH), "undated". "Vulnerability: a micro perspective," QEH Working Papers qehwps149, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford.
    5. Tomoki Fujii, 2016. "Concepts and measurement of vulnerability to poverty and other issues: a review of literature," Chapters, in: Jacques Silber & Guanghua Wan (ed.), The Asian ‘Poverty Miracle’, chapter 3, pages 53-83, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    6. Stefan Dercon (QEH), "undated". "Risk, Growth and Poverty: what do we know, what do we need to know?," QEH Working Papers qehwps148, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford.
    7. Satya R. Chakravarty & Nachiketa Chattopadhyay & Jacques Silber & Guanghua Wan, 2016. "Measuring the impact of vulnerability on the number of poor: a new methodology with empirical illustrations," Chapters, in: Jacques Silber & Guanghua Wan (ed.), The Asian ‘Poverty Miracle’, chapter 4, pages 84-117, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    8. Emiliano Magrini & Pierluigi Montalbano, 2012. "Trade openness and vulnerability to poverty: Vietnam in the long-run (1992-2008)," Working Paper Series 3512, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    9. Gallardo, Mauricio, 2013. "Using the downside mean-semideviation for measuring vulnerability to poverty," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 120(3), pages 416-418.
    10. Antonio Acconcia & Maria Carannante & Michelangelo Misuraca & Germana Scepi, 2020. "Measuring Vulnerability to Poverty with Latent Transition Analysis," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 151(1), pages 1-31, August.
    11. Satya R. Chakravarty & Nachiketa Chattopadhyay & Liu Qingbin, 2015. "Vulnerability Orderings for Expected Poverty Indices," The Japanese Economic Review, Japanese Economic Association, vol. 66(3), pages 300-310, September.
    12. Mousumi Das, 2021. "Vulnerability to Food Insecurity: A Decomposition Exercise for Rural India using the Expected Utility Approach," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 156(1), pages 167-199, July.
    13. K.S. Kavi Kumar & Richard J.T. Klein & Cezar Ionescu & Jochen Hinkel & Rupert Klein, 2007. "Vulnerability To Poverty And Vulnerability To Climate Change: Conceptual Framework, Measurement And Synergies In Policy," Working Papers 2007-019, Madras School of Economics,Chennai,India.
    14. Chiwaula, Levison & Waibel, Hermann, 2011. "Does seasonal vulnerability to poverty matter? A case study from the Hadejia-Nguru Wetlands in Nigeria," Proceedings of the German Development Economics Conference, Berlin 2011 19, Verein für Socialpolitik, Research Committee Development Economics.
    15. Jalan, Jyotsna & Ravallion, Martin, 1996. "Transient poverty in rural China," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1616, The World Bank.
    16. Günther, Isabel & Harttgen, Kenneth, 2009. "Estimating Households Vulnerability to Idiosyncratic and Covariate Shocks: A Novel Method Applied in Madagascar," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(7), pages 1222-1234, July.
    17. Jhon Edwar Hernández & Blanca Zuluaga, 2022. "Vulnerability to Multidimensional Poverty: An Application to Colombian Households," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 164(1), pages 345-371, November.
    18. Hill, Ruth Vargas & Porter, Catherine, 2017. "Vulnerability to Drought and Food Price Shocks: Evidence from Ethiopia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 65-77.
    19. Anh Thu Quang Pham & Pundarik Mukhopadhaya & Ha Vu, 2021. "Estimating poverty and vulnerability to monetary and non-monetary poverty: the case of Vietnam," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 61(6), pages 3125-3177, December.
    20. Basu, Kaushik & Nolen, Patrick, 2004. "Vulnerability, Unemployment and Poverty: A New Class of Measures, Its Axiomatic Properties and Application," Working Papers 04-07, Cornell University, Center for Analytic Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Poverty; Risk; Vulnerability; Welfare Axioms;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • I3 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oxf:wpaper:229. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Anne Pouliquen (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sfeixuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.