Vulnerability to Poverty Following Extreme Weather Events in Malawi
Severe weather shocks recurrently hit Malawi, and they adversely affect the incomes of many farm households as well as small businesses. With climate change, the frequency of extreme weather events is expected to increase further. A clear understan...
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| Language: | English |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2020
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/372641602594949318/Vulnerability-to-Poverty-Following-Extreme-Weather-Events-in-Malawi http://hdl.handle.net/10986/34630 |
| Summary: | Severe weather shocks recurrently hit
Malawi, and they adversely affect the incomes of many farm
households as well as small businesses. With climate change,
the frequency of extreme weather events is expected to
increase further. A clear understanding of households’
vulnerability to shock-induced poverty is critical for
disaster risk management and the design of scalable social
safety net programs. Standard poverty measures rely on
static snapshots that are suitable for quantifying
structural poverty but not for assessing the vulnerability
of non-poor households to fall below the poverty line when
they experience shocks. This study uses a nationally
representative household survey and exogenously measured
weather shocks to assess households' vulnerability to
poverty in Malawi. To accurately estimate the impacts of
shocks on consumption and vulnerability, the study excludes
any kind of assistance (aid and food or cash transfers) that
households might have received after major disasters. The
key findings of the study are as follows: (1) drought during
the growing season decreases non-assistance consumption per
capita by 5–12 percent, depending on its intensity; (2)
excess rainfall at the onset of the growing season reduces
food consumption by 1.8 percent, while excess rainfall later
in the growing season appears to increase consumption; (3)
vulnerability to poverty is generally higher than static
poverty, especially compared to static poverty measured
during a good weather year; and (4) in years of extreme
droughts, such as 2016, recorded poverty rates are higher
than vulnerability, which indicates that the magnitude of
drought in 2016 was so large that the chance of falling
below the poverty line as a result of an even higher
magnitude shock was low. These results suggest that
identifying vulnerable households is key in designing
adaptive social safety net programs that can be scaled up to
cover those who become eligible for such programs after
experiencing shocks. |
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