Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/90470 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2010
Series/Report no.: 
Discussion Papers No. 44
Publisher: 
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Courant Research Centre - Poverty, Equity and Growth (CRC-PEG), Göttingen
Abstract: 
In this paper we propose a new measure of vulnerability called vulnerability to downside risk. The relevant benchmark for this new measure is the current level of wellbeing of a household as opposed to another benchmark such as the poverty line. We argue that this measure adds complementary information to existing measures such as Calvo and Dercon's (2007) axiomatic measure of vulnerability to poverty. We apply a measure of both vulnerability to downside risk and to poverty to data from Vietnam. We show that consumption smoothing capacities and the probability to experience an adverse event differ substantially between different wealth groups. Consequently, the relation between initial wealth and vulnerability to downside risk is highly non-linear. While moderately but not extremely poor households are relatively vulnerable to extreme poverty, they are less vulnerable to downside risk than any other group of households.
Subjects: 
Vulnerability
Poverty
Shocks
Risk
JEL: 
D81
I31
I32
O12
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.