Vulnerability in Developing Countries

I ALL THE MAJOR CHALLENGES CURRENTLY FACING the world, whether it is climate change, terrorism and conflict or urbanization and demographic shifts, no progress is possible without the alleviation of poverty. To reduce poverty sustainably, however, reducing household vulnerability and increasing household resilience are also necessary. This aspect is often overlooked by policy-makers. For instance, most of the traditional measures of poverty, including those used to define some of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), only weigh the current poverty of a household, with no regard for the probability that a household might fall into poverty in the future. This ex post measure of development needs to be replaced by indicators that recognize that anti-poverty policies need to be forward-looking and incorporate the hazards affecting whether individuals or households are in poverty or are likely to fall into poverty – i.e. their vulnerability. To facilitate the introduction and use of such forward-looking measures of poverty, the UNU-WIDER project on “Fragility and Development” investigated a number of dimensions of vulnerability and the consequences for development policy. What is vulnerability? How can it be measured? How should households, governments and development agencies respond to vulnerability? This research brief summarizes some of the core findings from the project. The key research papers emanating from the project are listed in the box “Project Papers on Vulnerability in Developing Countries’’. These papers deal with the concept and measurement of vulnerability, and apply and extend the concept of vulnerability in the context of developing countries. The remainder of this research brief consists of a guide to these papers.