Vulnerability to Poverty Following Extreme Weather Events in Malawi

Baquie, Sandra ; Fuje, Habtamu

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: DROUGHT;    FLOODS;    WELFARE;    VULNERABILITY;    EXTREME WEATHER;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-9435
RP-ID  :  WPS9435

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Severe weather shocks recurrently hitMalawi, and they adversely affect the incomes of many farmhouseholds as well as small businesses. With climate change,the frequency of extreme weather events is expected toincrease further. A clear understanding of households’vulnerability to shock-induced poverty is critical fordisaster risk management and the design of scalable socialsafety net programs. Standard poverty measures rely onstatic snapshots that are suitable for quantifyingstructural poverty but not for assessing the vulnerabilityof non-poor households to fall below the poverty line whenthey experience shocks. This study uses a nationallyrepresentative household survey and exogenously measuredweather shocks to assess households' vulnerability topoverty in Malawi. To accurately estimate the impacts ofshocks on consumption and vulnerability, the study excludesany kind of assistance (aid and food or cash transfers) thathouseholds might have received after major disasters. Thekey findings of the study are as follows: (1) drought duringthe growing season decreases non-assistance consumption percapita by 5–12 percent, depending on its intensity; (2)excess rainfall at the onset of the growing season reducesfood consumption by 1.8 percent, while excess rainfall laterin the growing season appears to increase consumption; (3)vulnerability to poverty is generally higher than staticpoverty, especially compared to static poverty measuredduring a good weather year; and (4) in years of extremedroughts, such as 2016, recorded poverty rates are higherthan vulnerability, which indicates that the magnitude ofdrought in 2016 was so large that the chance of fallingbelow the poverty line as a result of an even highermagnitude shock was low. These results suggest thatidentifying vulnerable households is key in designingadaptive social safety net programs that can be scaled up tocover those who become eligible for such programs afterexperiencing shocks.