Shocks are often primarily associated with downward mobility or short-term movements in and out of poverty. However, households at the bottom of the welfare distribution are likely to face the most constraints to access insurance mechanisms. In this paper, we consider whether shocks directly affect poverty persistence. In order to analyze the impact of shocks on households’ welfare path over time...
Natural hazards, an increasingly important phenomenon, have a direct impact at regional and household level. The growing incidence and persistence of natural events are strongly linked to increasing vulnerability of households and communities in developing countries. Previous socioeconomic vulnerabilities may exacerbate the impact of a specific event, making more difficult the process of...
There is little micro-evidence on the persistence of natural disasters' welfare impacts. This paper assesses the effect of Hurricane Mitch on consumption of Nicaraguan agricultura) households. Mitch occurred in October 1998. Pre-post data is obtained from a nationally representative panel collected in 1998 and 2001. An additional survey was fielded in 1999 for households from the panel affected...
This paper presents and applies the social risk management (SRM) conceptual framework to examine links between disaster risk, hazards, vulnerability, risk management, and social protection (SP). The paper makes the case that it is important to mainstream social protection policies into the disaster risk management (DRM) agenda and, vice versa as a means to improve household and community...
The Inter-American Conference on Social Security (CISS) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Office in Mexico jointly organized the conference “Natural Disasters in Latin America: Welfare Impacts and Social Protection Solutions” held in Mexico City in January 2010. The main objectives of the conference were to improve the understanding of (i) how natural disasters affect...
Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs have proved to be effective in inducing chronic poor households to invest in the human capital of their children while helping reduce poverty. They have also protected child human capital from the shocks that affect these households. In this paper, we argue that many non-poor households exposed to uninsured shocks have to use children as risk coping...
