IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ris/adbiwp/0611.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Concepts and Measurement of Vulnerability to Poverty and Other Issues: A Review of Literature

Author

Listed:
  • Fujii, Tomoki

    (Asian Development Bank Institute)

Abstract

The body of literature on vulnerability is growing. We classify studies on the concepts and measurements of vulnerability to poverty into welfarist, expected poverty, and axiomatic approaches. Empirical studies on vulnerability to poverty in Asia and elsewhere show that poverty and vulnerability are related but different, and that key determinants of vulnerability often include education and location. We also briefly review other areas of vulnerability analysis such as vulnerability to climate change and recommend policies.

Suggested Citation

  • Fujii, Tomoki, 2016. "Concepts and Measurement of Vulnerability to Poverty and Other Issues: A Review of Literature," ADBI Working Papers 611, Asian Development Bank Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:ris:adbiwp:0611
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/210526/adbi-wp611.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cesar Calvo & Stefan Dercon, 2005. "Measuring Individual Vulnerability," Economics Series Working Papers 229, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    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. Wim Naude & Amelia Santos-Paulino & Mark McGillivray, 2009. "Measuring Vulnerability: An Overview and Introduction," Oxford Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(3), pages 183-191.
    4. Morduch, Jonathan, 1994. "Poverty and Vulnerability," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(2), pages 221-225, May.
    5. 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.
    6. Christopher Gerry & Carmen Li, 2010. "Consumption smoothing and vulnerability in Russia," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(16), pages 1995-2007.
    7. Takashi Kurosaki, 2006. "Consumption vulnerability to risk in rural Pakistan," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(1), pages 70-89.
    8. 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.
    9. Steven Stillman & Duncan Thomas, 2008. "Nutritional Status During an Economic Crisis: Evidence from Russia," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(531), pages 1385-1417, August.
    10. Miklós Koren & Silvana Tenreyro, 2007. "Volatility and Development," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(1), pages 243-287.
    11. Foster, James & Greer, Joel & Thorbecke, Erik, 1984. "A Class of Decomposable Poverty Measures," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(3), pages 761-766, May.
    12. Dercon, Stefan, 1996. "Risk, Crop Choice, and Savings: Evidence from Tanzania," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 44(3), pages 485-513, April.
    13. Wim Naude & Mark McGillivray & Stephanie Rossouw, 2009. "Measuring the Vulnerability of Subnational Regions in South Africa," Oxford Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(3), pages 249-276.
    14. Cesar Calvo & Stefan Dercon, 2007. "Vulnerability to Poverty," CSAE Working Paper Series 2007-03, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    15. Rosenzweig, Mark R & Binswanger, Hans P, 1993. "Wealth, Weather Risk and the Composition and Profitability of Agricultural Investments," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 103(416), pages 56-78, January.
    16. Townsend, Robert M, 1994. "Risk and Insurance in Village India," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(3), pages 539-591, May.
    17. 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.
    18. Raghav Gaiha & Katsushi Imai, 2004. "Vulnerability, shocks and persistence of poverty: estimates for semi-arid rural South India," Oxford Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(2), pages 261-281.
    19. Satya R. Chakravarty, 2019. "A New Index of Poverty," Themes in Economics, in: Satya R. Chakravarty (ed.), Poverty, Social Exclusion and Stochastic Dominance, pages 31-37, Springer.
    20. Yuan Zhang & Guanghua Wan, 2006. "An Empirical Analysis of Household Vulnerability in Rural China," Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(2), pages 196-212.
    21. McCulloch, Neil & Calandrino, Michele, 2003. "Vulnerability and Chronic Poverty in Rural Sichuan," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 611-628, March.
    22. Raghbendra Jha & Tu Dang & Yusuf Tashrifov, 2010. "Economic vulnerability and poverty in Tajikistan," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 43(2), pages 95-112, May.
    23. Tomoki Fujii, 2016. "Climate change and vulnerability to poverty: an empirical investigation in rural Indonesia," Chapters, in: Jacques Silber & Guanghua Wan (ed.), The Asian ‘Poverty Miracle’, chapter 5, pages 118-146, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    24. Indranil Dutta & James Foster & Ajit Mishra, 2011. "On measuring vulnerability to poverty," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 37(4), pages 743-761, October.
    25. Lino Briguglio & Gordon Cordina & Nadia Farrugia & Stephanie Vella, 2009. "Economic Vulnerability and Resilience: Concepts and Measurements," Oxford Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(3), pages 229-247.
    26. Calvo, Cesar, 2008. "Vulnerability to Multidimensional Poverty: Peru, 1998-2002," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 36(6), pages 1011-1020, June.
    27. Katsushi Imai & Xiaobing Wang & Woojin Kang, 2010. "Poverty and vulnerability in rural China: effects of taxation," Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(4), pages 399-425.
    28. Ravallion, Martin, 1988. "Expected Poverty under Risk-Induced Welfare Variability," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 98(393), pages 1171-1182, December.
    29. Ethan Ligon & Laura Schechter, 2003. "Measuring Vulnerability," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(486), pages 95-102, March.
    30. Carter, Michael R. & Zimmerman, Frederick J., 2000. "The dynamic cost and persistence of asset inequality in an agrarian economy," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 265-302, December.
    31. Pritchett, Lant & Suryahadi, Asep & Sumarto, Sudarno, 2000. "Quantifying vulnerability to poverty - a proposed measure, applied to Indonesia," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2437, The World Bank.
    32. Shantayanan Devarajan & William Jack, 2007. "Protecting the Vulnerable: the Tradeoff between Risk Reduction and Public Insurance," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 21(1), pages 73-91.
    33. Zimmerman, Frederick J. & Carter, Michael R., 2003. "Asset smoothing, consumption smoothing and the reproduction of inequality under risk and subsistence constraints," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 233-260, August.
    34. Stephan Klasen & Felix Povel, 2013. "Defining and Measuring Vulnerability: State of the Art and New Proposals," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Stephan Klasen & Hermann Waibel (ed.), Vulnerability to Poverty, chapter 2, pages 17-49, Palgrave Macmillan.
    35. Glewwe, Paul & Hall, Gillette, 1998. "Are some groups more vulnerable to macroeconomic shocks than others? Hypothesis tests based on panel data from Peru," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 181-206, June.
    36. Stefan Dercon & Pramila Krishnan, 2000. "Vulnerability, seasonality and poverty in Ethiopia," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(6), pages 25-53.
    37. Eswaran, Mukesh & Kotwal, Ashok, 1990. "Implications of Credit Constraints for Risk Behaviour in Less Developed Economies," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 42(2), pages 473-482, April.
    38. Raghbendra Jha & Tu Dang, 2010. "Vulnerability to Poverty in Papua New Guinea in 1996," Asian Economic Journal, East Asian Economic Association, vol. 24(3), pages 235-251, September.
    39. Chris Elbers & Jan Willem Gunning, 2003. "Vulnerability in a Stochastic Dynamic Model," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 03-070/2, Tinbergen Institute.
    40. de la Fuente, Alejandro, 2010. "Remittances and Vulnerability to Poverty in Rural Mexico," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 38(6), pages 828-839, June.
    41. 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.
    42. Montalbano, Pierluigi, 2011. "Trade Openness and Developing Countries' Vulnerability: Concepts, Misconceptions, and Directions for Research," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 39(9), pages 1489-1502, September.
    43. Levison Chiwaula & Rudolf Witt & Hermann Waibel, 2011. "An Asset-Based Approach to Vulnerability: The Case of Small-Scale Fishing Areas in Cameroon and Nigeria," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(2), pages 338-353.
    44. Clark, Stephen & Hemming, Richard & Ulph, David, 1981. "On Indices for the Measurement of Poverty," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 91(362), pages 515-526, June.
    45. Susanne Milcher, 2010. "Household vulnerability estimates of Roma in Southeast Europe," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 34(4), pages 773-792.
    46. Moser, Caroline O. N., 1998. "The asset vulnerability framework: Reassessing urban poverty reduction strategies," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 1-19, January.
    47. 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.
    48. Hardeweg, Bernd & Wagener, Andreas & Waibel, Hermann, 2013. "A distributional approach to comparing vulnerability, applied to rural provinces in Thailand and Vietnam," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 53-65.
    49. 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.
    50. Dhanani, Shafiq & Islam, Iyanatul, 2002. "Poverty, Vulnerability and Social Protection in a Period of Crisis: The Case of Indonesia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 30(7), pages 1211-1231, July.
    51. Jalan, Jyotsna & Ravallion, Martin, 1998. "Transient Poverty in Postreform Rural China," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 338-357, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tomoki Fujii, 2016. "Climate change and vulnerability to poverty: an empirical investigation in rural Indonesia," Chapters, in: Jacques Silber & Guanghua Wan (ed.), The Asian ‘Poverty Miracle’, chapter 5, pages 118-146, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    2. Jingjing Zhou & Yaoyu Zhang & Yong Sha & Jianfang Zhou & Hang Ren & Xin Shen & Hui Xu, 2022. "The Effect of the “Triple-Layer Medical Security” Policy on the Vulnerability as Expected Poverty of Rural Households: Evidence from Yunnan Province, China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(19), pages 1-22, October.
    3. Naqvi, Asjad & Monasterolo, Irene, 2019. "Natural Disasters, Cascading Losses, and Economic Complexity: A Multi-layer Behavioral Network Approach," Ecological Economic Papers 24, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    4. Ishida, Atsushi & Maeda, Yutaka, 2020. "Vulnerability to Negative Life Events: Unemployment and Loss of a Spouse in Japan," SocArXiv g2wcf, Center for Open Science.
    5. 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.
    6. Pandey, Vivek & Singh, Shyam & Kumar, Deepak, 2022. "COVID-19, information management by local governments, and food consumption," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    7. Sayema Haque Bidisha & Tanveer Mahmood & Md. Biplob Hossain, 2021. "Assessing Food Poverty, Vulnerability and Food Consumption Inequality in the Context of COVID-19: A Case of Bangladesh," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 155(1), pages 187-210, May.
    8. 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.

    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. Montalbano, Pierluigi, 2011. "Trade Openness and Developing Countries' Vulnerability: Concepts, Misconceptions, and Directions for Research," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 39(9), pages 1489-1502, September.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. Mauricio Gallardo, 2018. "Identifying Vulnerability To Poverty: A Critical Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(4), pages 1074-1105, September.
    5. Muhammad Masood Azeem & Amin W. Mugera & Steven Schilizzi & Kadambot H. M. Siddique, 2017. "An Assessment of Vulnerability to Poverty in Punjab, Pakistan: Subjective Choices of Poverty Indicators," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 134(1), pages 117-152, October.
    6. 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.
    7. 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.
    8. 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.
    9. Ward, Patrick S., 2016. "Transient Poverty, Poverty Dynamics, and Vulnerability to Poverty: An Empirical Analysis Using a Balanced Panel from Rural China," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 541-553.
    10. Kurosaki, Takashi & 黒崎, 卓, 2010. "Targeting the Vulnerable and the Choice of Vulnerability Measures: Review and Application to Pakistan," PRIMCED Discussion Paper Series 1, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    11. Gallardo, Mauricio, 2013. "Using the downside mean-semideviation for measuring vulnerability to poverty," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 120(3), pages 416-418.
    12. Azeem, Muhammad Masood & Mugera, Amin W. & Schilizzi, Steven, 2016. "Poverty and vulnerability in the Punjab, Pakistan: A multilevel analysis," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 57-72.
    13. 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.
    14. Vo, Thang T., 2018. "Household vulnerability as expected poverty in Vietnam," World Development Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 10, pages 1-14.
    15. Alfani, Federica & Dabalen, Andrew & Fisker, Peter & Molini, Vasco, 2019. "Vulnerability to stunting in the West African Sahel," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 39-47.
    16. Hardeweg, Bernd & Wagener, Andreas & Waibel, Hermann, 2013. "A distributional approach to comparing vulnerability, applied to rural provinces in Thailand and Vietnam," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 53-65.
    17. 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.
    18. Gallardo, Mauricio, 2022. "Measuring vulnerability to multidimensional poverty with Bayesian network classifiers," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 492-512.
    19. Christian D. Mina & Katsushi S. Imai, 2017. "Estimation of Vulnerability to Poverty Using a Multilevel Longitudinal Model: Evidence from the Philippines," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(12), pages 2118-2144, December.
    20. 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.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    poverty; vulnerability;

    JEL classification:

    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
    • O10 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - General

    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:ris:adbiwp:0611. 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: ADB Institute (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/adbinjp.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.