What Do Household Surveys Really Tell Us About Risk, Shocks, and Risk Management in the Developing World?

This article reports on a project to explore empirical patterns in risk, shocks and risk management using recent household surveys with risk modules from 16 different developing countries. Natural disasters, health shocks, economic shocks, and asset loss are the most commonly reported types of shock...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Heltberg, Rasmus, Oviedo, Ana María, Talukdar, Faiyaz
Format: Journal Article
Language:en_US
Published: Taylor and Francis 2015
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10986/22642
Description
Summary:This article reports on a project to explore empirical patterns in risk, shocks and risk management using recent household surveys with risk modules from 16 different developing countries. Natural disasters, health shocks, economic shocks, and asset loss are the most commonly reported types of shocks and, especially for the poor, often result in ‘bad’ coping responses that may perpetuate vulnerability. The information culled from these survey modules falls short of expectations in several ways.