Income risk, coping strategies

and safety nets

Stefan Dercon

September 1999

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

And
Centre for the Study of African Economies
Oxford University
Department of Economics
Manor Road
Oxford OX1 3UL
Summary

Rural and urban households in developing countries face substantial idiosyncratic

and common risk, resulting in high income variability. Households in risky
environments have developed sophisticated (ex-ante) risk-management and (ex-post)
risk-coping strategies, including self-insurance via savings and informal insurance
mechanisms to do so while formal credit and insurance markets appear to contribute
only little to reducing income risk and its consequences. Informal credit and
insurance, however incomplete, helps to cope with risky incomes. Despite these
strategies, vulnerability remains high, and is reflected in fluctuations in consumption.
It is clear therefore, that further development of safety nets will be necessary. In this
paper, we focus on the opportunities available to households to use risk-management
and risk-coping strategies, and on the constraints on their effectiveness.

Fluctuations in consumption usually imply relatively high levels of transient poverty.

High income risk may also be a cause of persistent poverty. The failure to cope with
income risk is not only reflected in household consumption fluctuations but affect
nutrition, health and education and contribute to inefficient and unequal intra-
household allocations.

Deaton’s model provides a useful description of the advantages of self-insurance.

Policy conclusions may be limited however. In practice, assets are risky, not safe. The
covariance of asset values and income due to common shocks makes self-insurance a
far less useful strategy than it seems. We quantify the consequences of holding risky
assets that are covariate with incomes, using simulations.

Access to relatively safe and profitable assets, which might be useful for consumption
smoothing, may also be limited. Lumpiness in assets may be a reason why the poor
cannot protect themselves easily via assets.

Policies that influence asset market risks could be beneficial to households attempting
to deal with shocks. Policies could include providing more attractive and diversified
savings instruments. Microfinance initiatives should put savings for self-insurance on
the agenda. Macroeconomic stability during income downturns would also allow self-
insurance to function better.

Income smoothing can be achieved by income portfolio adjustments. In practice

relatively little income smoothing (even via income portfolio adjustments) is achieved
by poorer households. Income diversification for effective risk-reduction appears
limited. Observed diversification patterns are often not aimed at reducing risk.
Households face entry constraints to enter into profitable activities.

i
Income risk reduction often comes at a cost. Income skewing is likely if less protection
is offered by investing in assets. The long-term consequences for the asset-poor are
lower average incomes and a higher income gap relative to asset-rich households.

Observing specialisation does not necessarily imply that the household follows a
high-risk strategy. Also, entry constraints may limit the diversification that can be
achieved, leaving only low-return activities free to the poor. Income portfolios must
be seen in relation to the asset portfolio and other options available: a risky,
specialised portfolio may mean lower consumption risk than a diversified portfolio,
depending on the asset position. Finally, several income-based strategies are only be
invoked when a crisis looms. These (income)‘coping’ or ‘survival’ strategies are
especially important when the shock is economy-wide.

There has been increasing interest in the empirical analysis of informal risk-sharing
and theoretical modelling on the sustainability and consequences of these
arrangements. Risk-sharing can be viewed as the cross-sectional equivalent of
consumption smoothing over time.

In the absence of enforcement problems, the existence of better savings opportunities

and a public safety net providing transfers when common shocks occur, could
improve welfare without crowding out the informal insurance arrangement. A
transfer-based safety net is, however, likely to crowd out private (precautionary)
savings.

Informal insurance arrangements are likely to have to be self-enforcing, imposing

sustainability constraints. Circumstances in which risk-sharing arrangements may be
sustained are, inter alia: a low discount rate of the future, high frequency of
interactions, situations in which idiosyncratic shocks are more frequent relative to
other shocks.

Evaluating the effects of alternative coping mechanisms such as savings, or of policy

interventions such as providing better savings instruments or public safety nets, needs
to take into account their effect on incentives to sustain the agreement rather than to
go it alone. It is possible that opportunities for precautionary savings or a public
safety net would actually be welfare-reducing and displace the informal insurance
arrangement by more than one to one.

Any policy intervention that improves an individual’s position outside a private

group-based informal risk-sharing arrangement may provide incentives to break
down the informal arrangement. Targeted interventions that target only some
members of communities or groups could be particularly counterproductive. Group-
based savings schemes could provide a useful alternative or complement if one is
concerned about crowding-out. The possibly negative welfare effects can be avoided.

Whether the crowding-out and potential negative welfare effects of interventions on

informal insurance mechanisms are significant is an empirical question. If common
shocks are dominant and if groups and communities rather than just individuals are
targeted, these negative effects are likely to be less significant.

ii
Standard quantitative poverty analysis assumes that consumption is smooth. If
smoothing is not possible, especially when large negative shocks occur, then
alternative measures of poverty and vulnerability need to be explored. If inter-
temporal data are available, broader definitions can be used to describe
vulnerability. Aggregate measures of ‘vulnerability’ can be obtained.

Targeting assistance to the vulnerable population requires specific kinds of

information. Analysing the characteristics of households experiencing chronic or
transient poverty, or in general, their consumption fluctuations, can provide this
information. Panel data are required for this analysis.

If policies are exogenous to the risk management and coping strategies, then
information on how households handle income risk is irrelevant. However, policies
may affect household opportunities to cope with risk (e.g. by changing exit options
from informal insurance). In that case, how households cope with risk is relevant for
the design of policies, in turn increasing data requirements.

If effective safety nets and other consumption risk-reducing policies require detailed
knowledge of existing risk-reducing actions by households, then surveys need
information on physical, human and social capital, on shocks, as well as on
opportunities in labour, product and asset markets. Panel and cross-section surveys
could be used to collect relevant information.

The complexity of consumption-risk reducing strategies implies that a simple

indicator is unlikely to be available. Measures of vulnerability would typically require
detailed data, including from panels. Some indicators that aim to describe
vulnerability are typically flawed.

The emphasis on the ability to cope with risk via assets, human capital and informal
insurance and on the opportunities available, marks a convergence of different
disciplines, bridging gaps with more qualitative approaches.

iii
Income risk, coping strategies and safety nets1

1. Introduction

• Rural and urban households in developing countries face substantial idiosyncratic

and common risk, resulting in high income variability.

High income risk is a part of life in developing countries. Climatic risks, economic
fluctuations, but also a large number of idiosyncratic shocks make these households
vulnerable to serious hardship. For example, table 1 gives details on the various
shocks causing serious hardship to rural households in Ethiopia in the last twenty
years Not surprisingly for Ethiopia, climatic events are the most common cause of
shocks, but many households suffer from other common or idiosyncratic shocks
related to economic policy, labour or livestock.

Table 1 Shocks faced by rural households in Ethiopia

Percentage of households
Events causing of hardship reporting hardship episode in last
20 years
Harvest failure (drought, flooding, frost, etc.) 78
Policy shock (taxation, forced labour, ban on migration, …) 42
Labour problems (illness or deaths) 40
Oxen problems (diseases, deaths) 39
Other livestock (diseases, deaths) 35
Land problems (villagisation, land reform) 17
Assets losses (fire, loss) 16
War 7
Crime/banditry (theft, violence) 3
Source: own calculations based on Ethiopian Rural Panel Data Survey (1994-1997)

Many other studies have reported high income variability related to risks of various
forms. Using the 10-year panel data for one of three ICRISAT villages in India,
Townsend (1994, p.544) reports high yearly fluctuations yields (in monetary terms)
per unit of land for the dominant crops. The coefficient of variation for castor was
found to be 1.01, for paddy 0.70 and for a sorghum/millet/pea intercrop 0.51. Kinsey
et al. (1998) report a high frequency of harvest failures in a 23-year panel of rural
households in a resettlement area in Zimbabwe. Bliss and Stern (1982) provide an
estimate for Palanpur, India: if the onset of production is delayed by two weeks, then
yields decline by 20 percent. Morduch (1995) provides other examples.

1
Draft Background Paper for the World Development Report 2000/01. The author is at the Katholieke
Universiteit Leuven and Oxford University. An early draft of the parts dealing with informal insurance
was presented at the Annual Bank Conference in Development Economics in Europe, in Paris in May
1999. E-mail: [Link]@[Link]

1
• Shocks can be idiosyncratic or common. But other characteristics matter as well
in causing hardship or exacerbating the effect of shocks to income. The nature of
the shock has implications for the ability to cope with its consequences.

Income risk is caused by a variety of factors. Typically, common (aggregate,

economy-wide, covariate) risk is distinguished from individual (idiosyncratic) risk:
the former affects everybody in a particular community or region; the latter only
affects a particular individual in this community. In practice, even within well-defined
rural communities, few risks are purely idiosyncratic or common. Table 2 gives details
on different events and shocks experienced by households in a 3-period panel data set
on Ethiopia in a data set. A large number of different shocks affecting income
happen; most shocks have a large idiosyncratic part. (In the last column, the table
gives a measure of the extent to which the shock ‘common’ is to the households in the
community. The lower the contribution of the village level variance to total variance,
the more idiosyncratic the shock.)

Table 2 Shocks affecting income 1994-1995 (n=1450, 15 communities)

1994a 1994b 1995 village level
variance as %
total variance*
village rainfall (% above long-run mean) 0.06 0.12 0.12 100
rain index (individual, 1 is best)$ 0.57 0.57 0.63 77.0
non-rain shock index (1 is best), total index$ 0.65 n.a. 0.80 24.2
non-rain shock : low temperature, frost, storm, etc.$ 0.71 n.a. 0.82 35.4
non-rain shock: pests and diseases on crops$ 0.59 n.a. 0.77 26.4
non-rain shock: animal damage, trampling,…$ 0.68 n.a. 0.85 29.1
non-rain shock: weed damage$ 0.29 n.a. 0.14 13.1
crop index (best=1, 0 worst)$ 0.33 0.65 0.43 35.1
Livestock affected by animal disease (1 is best)$ 0.72 0.86 0.89 21.1
Livestock affected by lack of water and grazing land (1 is 0.71 0.78 0.78 22.3
best)$
Number of days lost by adults in last month per adult 0.66 0.45 0.39 3.1
Adults died in last six months n.a. 0.04 0.02 4.1
Lower harvest linked to not having labour due to illness 0.19 n.a. 0.13 14.6
Lower harvest due to not finding labour when needed 0.18 n.a. 0.13 13.8
Lower harvest due to not finding oxen at right time 0.40 n.a. 0.27 29.6
$
index based on reported problems. 1 means no problems reported. 0 means all possible problems
occur. Rain index (individual) is based on problems for own activities from rainfall, including whether
it rained during harvest, irregularly for own crops, etc. Crop index is based on reported moderate or
serious crop failures.
*The results on the variance-decomposition are obtained allowing for time-varying village level means
on the pooled data set across rounds. In practice, this village-level variance is the R2 of a regression on
a full set of time-varying village level dummies.
**Figure for consumption refers to the variance of the log of real consumption per adult.
n.a.=not available
Source: Dercon and Krishnan (1999b).

Other studies also find that the idiosyncratic part of income risk is relatively large.
Deaton (1997) finds that common components for particular villages explain very
little of the variation of household income changes within villages in the Côte d’Ivoire
LSMS data for 1985-86. Townsend (1995) reports evidence from a Thai household

2
data set, suggesting that there are few common regional components in income
growth. The Indian ICRISAT-data suggest also relatively limited co-movement in
incomes within the villages (Townsend (1995)). Murdoch (1991) suggests that
idiosyncratic risk (inclusive of measurement error) accounts for 75 to 96 percent of
the total variance in income in these villages. Udry (1991) reports similar magnitudes
for Northern Nigeria.

Other characteristics of income risk include the frequency of shocks and the repeated
nature (see also Murdoch (1997)). Relatively small but frequent shocks are more
easily to deal with than large, infrequent negative shocks. Examples of the latter are
disability or chronic illness; the former are events such as transient illness. Gertler and
Gruber (1997) find that, in terms of consumption levels, households in their sample
from Indonesia can only protect 30 percent of the low-frequency health shocks with
serious long term effects, but about 70 percent of the high-frequency smaller health
shocks.

If shocks come together, i.e. bad shocks are repeated over time, then coping is more
difficult. Theoretically, the effects of autocorrelation on buffer stock behaviour are
explored by Deaton (1991). Using panel data from Pakistan, Alderman (1998) finds
that with successive shocks, consumption smoothing is more difficult than with a
single shocks.

The nature of the shock is important to understand the possibilities to deal with its
consequences. Idiosyncratic shocks can be insured within a community, but common
shocks cannot: if everybody is affected, the risk cannot be shared. Formal or informal
insurance transfers (credit or insurance) from outside the community are necessary;
intertemporal transfers (e.g. depletion of individual or community-level savings) are
also possible.

• Households in risky environments have developed sophisticated (ex-ante) risk-

management and (ex-post) risk-coping strategies, including self-insurance via
savings and informal insurance mechanisms.

Households do not just undergo the consequences of high risk. Livelihood systems
have developed that focus on long-term survival and well-being. There are different
ways to characterise these systems. Alderman and Paxson (1994) distinguish risk-
management from risk-coping strategies. The former attempt to affect ex-ante the
riskiness of the income process (‘income smoothing’). Examples are income
diversification, through combining activities with low positive covariance and
income-skewing, i.e. taking up low risk activities even at the cost of low return. In
practice, this implies that households are usually involved in a variety of activities,
including farm and off-farm activities, use seasonal migration to diversify, etc.
(Rosenzweig and Binswanger (1993), Morduch (1990), Alderman and Paxson (1994)
give more references). They are usually household or individually based but may also
involve neighbours, relatives or kingroups (Fafchamps (1992)) (see also section 3).

Risk-coping strategies involve self-insurance (through precautionary savings) and

informal group-based risk-sharing. They deal with the consequences (ex-post) of
income risk (‘consumption smoothing’). Households can insure themselves, by

3
building up assets in ‘good’ years, to deplete these stocks in ‘bad’ years. Deaton
(1991) has shown that precautionary savings can provide quite an effective, even
though imperfect strategy for households in dealing with income risk. Rosenzweig
and Wolpin (1993) report the use of bullocks in India to smooth consumption. Czukas
et al. (1998), however, find little evidence of smoothing through sales of livestock (for
a further discussion, see section 2).

Alternatively, informal arrangements can develop between members of a group or

village to support each other in case of hardship. These mechanisms are often
observed operating within extended families, ethnic groups, neighbourhood groups
and professional networks. In recent years, these mechanisms have been studied
theoretically and empirically in variety of settings (even though mainly in a few
villages in India) (theoretically by Coate and Ravallion (1993), in ICRISAT-villages
by Townsend (1994) and Ligon et al. (1997); empirically in the Philippines by Lund
and Fafchamps (1997)) (see also section 4).

Risk-coping strategies may also involve attempting to earn extra income when
hardship occurs. Kochar (1995) reports increased labour supply as the key response in
the ICRISAT villages. The literature on coping strategies when famine strikes also
regularly report attempts to earn additional income through a reallocation of labour,
including temporary migration, earning income from collecting wild foods (also for
own consumption), gathering activities (such as increased firewood collection), etc.
Dessalegn Rahmato (1991) reports all these responses during the famine in Wollo in
Ethiopia in 1984-85; similar responses were noticed in Sudan (De Waal (1987)).
Other examples are in Corbett (1988)2 (for more details, see section 3).

Group-based insurance mechanisms are geared towards insuring idiosyncratic shocks,

affecting some members but not to all. They obviously cannot provide insurance to
deal with shocks common to all members. Self-insurance can, in principle, deal with
any type of shock, as long as ex-ante sufficiently large resources have been built up.
Recent work has highlighted the links between informal insurance and self-insurance
(e.g. Ligon et al. (1998)) and below we discuss this in more detail (section 4), since
this has important implications for policy design.

• Formal credit and insurance markets appear to contribute only little to reducing
income risk and its consequences. Informal credit and insurance, however
incomplete, helps to cope with risky incomes.

2
The social sciences literature on household strategies dealing with shocks often uses a different
terminology. For example, Davies (1996) uses ‘coping strategies’ to describe strategies employed
during crises, where coping suggests success in dealing with the crisis, while ‘adaption’ is a
characteristic of a ‘vulnerable’ household, using ‘coping’ strategies as part of standard behaviour.
Adaptive strategies are then defined as a permanent change in the mix of ways in which households
make a living, irrespective of the year in question. For a good review, see Moser (1998). In this paper,
we consider a framework in which households develop strategies to deal with contingencies. A
distinction between adaption and coping seems less relevant. Any coping strategies will need ex-ante
actions, such as forming informal networks, or building up savings. Consequently, all households will
have adapted their livelihood to serve their own objectives as good as possible – and whether this
includes more or less ‘traditional’ coping strategies is conceptually irrelevant, although as will be seen,
it has analytical and policy implications, e.g. regarding long-term incomes.

4
These high risks are not easily insured via formal market mechanisms. Credit and
insurance markets are typically absent or incomplete for good theoretical reasons or
linked to bad policy (for surveys, see Bell (1988) or Besley (1994)). Consumption
loans are rare. Nevertheless, traditional credit systems (Roscas, Susu, Tontines) often
include a lending possibility, which may be used for consumption purposes. Formal
loans or loans in microfinance programmes also often serve consumption purposes via
their fungibility. Informal credit markets also appears to adjust to high-risk
environments. Udry (1994) reports that informal loans in rural Nigeria appear to take
the form of state contingent loans. Repayment is conditional on income outcomes of
both borrowers and lenders: negative shocks are translated into more favourable terms
for the agent experiencing them.

• Despite these strategies, vulnerability remains high and is reflected in fluctuations

in consumption. It is therefore clear that further development of safety nets will be
necessary.

Despite the existence of these systems, high variability in consumption outcomes

remains. Townsend (1995) noted that income variability remains high in the ICRISAT
data for India: diversification and other income strategies are only used to a limited
extent and in any case insufficient. Risk coping strategies are also typically
insufficient. Work on India estimates that transfers amount to less than 10 percent of
the typical income shocks (Rosenzweig (1988)). Townsend (1994) reports strong
evidence of insurance (risk-sharing) in the ICRISAT villages, even though it is still
only partial insurance, not full insurance3. Other studies also suggested imperfect risk-
sharing or consumption smoothing (Paxson (1993), Chaudhuri and Paxson (1994),
Deaton (1992), Deaton (1991), Morduch (1991), see also Deaton (1997) for several
examples).

The experiences during the large famines in the Horn in the mid-1980s also illustrated
the limitations of these coping strategies. Dessalegn Rahmato (1991) has documented
in detail the complexitiy of these strategies, but the results were still dramatic.
Reardon et al. (1988) report that transfers in the aftermath of the 1984 drought were
only equivalent to 3 percent of the losses for the poorest households in the Sahel.
Recent events in East-Asia during the recent crisis also exposed the limitations of
informal insurance and self-insurance. Large increases in consumption poverty have
been reported, especially for rural households in remote areas or those dependent on
transfers from urban areas, households relying on seasonal migration, and those
households who also experienced the El-Niño related drought in the same period.

3
Risk-sharing in this sample could be due to inter-household relationships but also due to self-
insurance. Rosenzweig and Wolpin (1993) find that bullocks sales and purchases contribute to
consumption smoothing in these villages (at the cost of higher returns). The evidence from Townsend
(1994) has also been questioned by Chaudhuri and Ravallion (1996) on econometric and other grounds.
They suggest only limited insurance.

5
• Fluctuations in consumption usually imply relatively high levels of transient
poverty. High income risk may also be a cause of persistent poverty.

The resulting consumption fluctuations can be expressed in terms of vulnerability to

fall below a particular minimum consumption level, either temporary or in a
permanent way. Different operational definitions of this idea exist in the literature.
Ravallion (1988) considers transient versus chronic poverty. The chronically poor are
defined as those with average consumption below the poverty line. Chronic poverty
for an individual can then be measured using average consumption as the welfare
indicator. Transient poverty for an individual is the average poverty over time minus
chronic poverty. Aggregation using procedures as in standard poverty measures
provides an overall measure of transient poverty. Using these definitions, Ravallion
(1988) finds that about half of total poverty is transient in the ICRISAT-sample; Jalan
and Ravallion (1996) find high transient poverty in panel data from rural China: half
of the mean squared poverty gap is transient. Other definitions of chronic and
transient poverty are possible; the outcomes are similar. For example, using income
data over 9 years from the ICRISAT panel in India, Gaiha and Deolalikar (1993)
report that about a fifth of households were poor in each year, but that only 12 percent
were never poor – most households were poor for some time.

The poorest households are typically least insured against shocks. For example,
Ravallion and Jalan (1997) report that for the poorest wealth decile, 40 percent of an
income shock is being passed onto current consumption. By contrast, consumption by
the richest third of households is protected from almost 90 percent of an income
shock.

However, high income risk and the need to cope with its consequences may have
implications for chronic poverty: households may be forced to forgo higher returns for
more stable consumption, even at low levels. The theory is developed in Eswaran and
Kotwal (1989); empirical examples include Rosenzweig and Binswanger (1993),
Morduch (1990), Dasgupta (1993), Dercon (1996) and (with some dissent) Jalan and
Ravallion (1998). These are discussed in more detail in section 3.

• The failure to cope with income risk is not only reflected in household
consumption fluctuations. Effects on nutrition, health and education are also
observed, as are intra-household consequences.

Rose (1994) finds that in rural India negative rainfall shocks are associated with
higher boy and girl mortality rates in landless households, but not in households with
lots of land. Jacoby and Skoufias (1997) find that in South India (ICRISAT-villages)
children are often taken out of school in response to adverse income shocks; the result
is lower accumulation of human capital. Foster (1995) shows that child growth was
affecgted during and after the severe floods in Bangladesh in 1988. He does not find
evidence of a sex bias. But other studies find such a bias. Using ICRISAT-data,
Behrman (1988) shows that the inability to smooth consumption implies that child
health suffers in the period before the major harvest; girls are most affected. Behrman
and Deolalikar (1990), using data on individual nutrient intakes from India, report that
estimated price and wage elasticities of intakes are substantially and significantly

6
higher for females than for males, suggesting that women and girls share a
disproportionate burden of rising food prices.

Dercon and Krishnan (1999) test risk-sharing within rural households in Ethiopia.
Adult nutrition is used to investigate whether individuals are able to smooth their
consumption and within the household over the seasons. Within poor households in
the southern part of the country, households do not engage in complete risk-sharing
between husbands and wives; women in these households bear the brunt of adverse
shocks. An average loss of labour due to illness for a female in a poor, southern
Ethiopian household results in a loss of 1.6 to 2.3 percent of body weight due to the
lack of risk-sharing.

• In this paper, we focus on the opportunities available to households to use risk-

management and risk-coping strategies, and on the constraints on their
effectiveness.

In the next section, we focus on self-insurance via savings. The advantages of savings
for consumption smoothing are well understood. What is less discussed is the factors
that may cause households not to be able to use this strategy effectively.
Consequently, we will focus on these issues. In section 3, we will focus on the risk
management strategies: income-smoothing strategies, such as diversification of
activities or skewing the income portfolio towards low risk activities. We will also
discuss the link with assets. In section 4, we discuss risk-coping strategies via
informal insurance. In section 5, we discuss the possibilities to inform policy by
monitoring vulnerability and consumption-risk reducing strategies. In section 6, we
conclude.

2. Asset strategies

• Deaton’s model provides a useful description of the advantages of self-insurance.

Policy conclusions may be limited however.

Deaton (1991) sets out clearly the benefits of self-insurance via savings when credit
markets are imperfect. In his model, the household maximises intertemporal expected
utility. Instantaneous utility is concave and the individual has a precautionary motive
(convex marginal utility). It can save, receiving a safe return r on the asset. Income is
stationary and risky4. Households are impatient, in that their rate of time preference δ
is large. The result is that r<δ. Deaton shows that if households are infinitely lived (a
‘dynasty’) then households will build up assets in good years to deplete in bad years.
Assets will not be systematically accumulated to very large levels due to impatience.
We observe high frequency fluctuations in savings, consumption smoother than
income, even though it is still possible that, after bad luck in the form of sequence of
bad draws, consumption is very low, i.e. a deep crisis is not easily insured. Deaton
plausibly argues that for many developing countries, this model fits well with some of
the stylised facts of occasional low consumption, low asset holdings and high
frequency of asset transactions.

4
In the basic model it is also i.i.d., but this assumption is relaxed in further simulations.

7
However, it is not easy to draw policy conclusions from this work, except for
developing credit and insurance markets, which, as is well known, face inherent
problems not easily addressed by interventions (Besley (1994)). In many ways the
result follow largely from the impatience of households: if only they were patient, they
would build up sufficient assets to cope with future stress.

• In practice, assets are risky, not safe. The covariance of asset values and income
due to common shocks makes self-insurance a far less useful strategy than it
seems.

Deaton’s model assumes that savings can occur in a safe form with a positive rate of
return. In practice, this may not be possible. The lack of integration of asset markets
and difficulties that face the poor in obtaining access to the better (internationally
traded) assets and securities means that the portfolio of assets available to the poor is
far from ideal. When a common negative shock occurs, incomes are low and returns
to different assets are also low – often even negative. As a consequence, just when
assets are needed, net stocks could be low as well. For example, if assets are kept in
the form of livestock (as they are commonly throughout most of the developing
world!), then during a drought not just are crop incomes low, but some livestock may
die as well and fertility will be low. The consequence is a smaller herd or even loss of
all livestock, just when needed as part of the self-insurance scheme5. Similarly, stock
market returns may be low when crisis hits an economy - as recent experience in Asia
has shown. To the extent that some of these stocks are kept for precautionary motives,
similar effects occur.

Another form of risk related to assets is not so much related to the return per se, but to
the terms of trade of assets relative to consumption. If a negative common shock
occurs, households would like to sell some of their assets. However, if everybody
wants to sell their assets, asset prices will collapse and the consumption that can be
purchased with the sale of assets will be lower. Similarly, when a positive shock
occurs, all will want to buy assets for future protection, but then prices will be pushed
up. In all, self-insurance becomes far more expensive as a strategy.

There is a lot of evidence, albeit some of it anecdotal, that this is indeed common
occurrence. During the famine in Ethiopia in 1984-85, terms of trade between
livestock and food collapsed – relative food prices became three times higher than
usual, reducing the purchasing power of assets by two-thirds. In recent times, house
prices in Indonesia and other Asian economies have collapsed after a boom during the
early 1990s.

Note that the same occurs during positive shocks. Bevan et al. (1991) reported on the
construction boom taking place during the coffee boom in the mid-1970s in Kenya:
prices for construction materials and other durables increased considerably.
Households tried to put some of their positive windfalls into more assets, but their
choice set was strongly restricted due to the macroeconomic policies.

5
Note that this type of risk in returns to assets are not limited to commodity-based assets. The risk of
bank bankcruptcy and a run to withdraw deposits during economic crisis means that seemingly safe
assets are in fact also risky with covariate returns with incomes.

8
• We can quantify the consequences of holding risky assets that are covariate with
incomes, using simulations.

Using a simple model and some simulations, we can illustrate some of the problems
arising from asset market imperfections in this context. Let the household maximise a
standard intertemporally separable utility function u. Instantaneous utility v is defined
over consumption c and strictly concave. Let δ be the rate of time preference. So at t,
the household maximises:

éT ù
ut = Et ê (1 + δ )t −τ v(cτ ) (1)
ë τ =t
Let yt be risky income and At, the stock of assets. Assets have a risky return rt.
However, we also introduce the complication that assets are kept in another form than
consumption units. With consumption prices as the numéraire, transforming
consumption into assets is at a price pt per unit of the asset. We can think of pt as the
terms of trade or the exchange rate between the asset and consumption, or
equivalently, a measure of the purchasing power of assets at t. See above for some
examples where this may be relevant.

The asset equation linking period t and t+1 can be written as

p
pt +1 At +1 = t +1 ( pt At + yt − ct )(1 + rt +1 ) (2)
pt
We introduce credit constraints in a simple way, stating that assets can never be non-
negative, or
At ≥ 0, ∀t (3)

Restricting ct, yt, pt and (1+rt) to non-negative values only, we can write the optimal
decision rule for consumption and savings between t and t+1 as:
é é p (1 + rt +1 ) ùù
v' (ct ) = max êv' ( pt At + yt ), Et ê t +1 v' (ct +1 )ú (4)
êë ë pt (1 + δ )
Households will consume and not save until intertemporally, appropriately discounted
and valued expected marginal utility is equated to current marginal utility (second
term on the right-hand side); however, if liquidity constraints bind, then the first term
will be higher, so that all assets and income are used for consumption. Equation (4) is
standard, except for the relative prices of assets. Note that in this formulation, the path
of prices (pt+1/pt) is relevant for evaluating expected future utility relative to current
marginal utility, while only rt+1 matters, not rt6. This allows us to consider different
ways risk can enter into asset values over time.

6
Formally, this means that current prices pt are a state variable in the dynamic programming problem,
besides the current value of assets plus income. When evaluating the future value of our assets, we need
to take into account the current rate of exchange (terms of trade) between assets and consumption. The
reason is that any reduction in consumption today needs to be transformed into assets using pt, , so that
assets can be carried over to the future; in the future, to consume the asset, it should be transformed
again into consumption units using pt+1. Consequently, the current state at t is not fully described by the
current means on hand, but we also need to consider the current price pt.

9
Further analytical results on the consequences of risk in asset values are not obviously
obtained. Using (4), we can however conduct some numerical simulations using
different assumptions about risk. We consider a finite life-cycle with T=20 and
assume that at the beginning of the first year, assets are equal to zero. Utility is
logarithmic in consumption (v(ct) = lnct). Income is risky and we assume that income
is approximately normally distributed with mean 50 and a standard deviation of 107.
We use a rate of time preference of 5 percent per period t. We can deploy different
assumptions about the risk related to assets; however, in all cases, households know
the distributions and moments of the random variables, but not the actual draw when
making decisions (rational expectations). We also use different assumptions about the
covariance between the risk in assets and the income risk.

To evaluate the consequences of different risk processes and their covariance, we

simply calculate a risk premium. We define this as the consumption the household is
willing to give up in the first year to obtain the optimal path of consumption without
liquidity constraints (i.e. with perfect credit and insurance markets)8. If the household
did not have access to any form of savings or credit, i.e. consumption and income are
equal in each period, then we find that, under our assumptions, the risk premium
implied by our assumption is 19.8 percent. Obviously, access to savings instruments,
however imperfect, could improve on this percentage. The success of self-insurance
can be measured by the reduction in the risk-premium via savings and assets. We
therefore also give the percentage of the total risk premium (i.e. of 19.8 percent) that
is recovered through using self-insurance.

We need to specify the different possible risk processes of assets and the covariance
with income. Table 3 summarises the cases considered. In general we assume
approximately normally distributed risk processes, using power points6. We
distinguish three cases. Case 1 considers a safe asset – no risk in terms of trade or in
return. Case 2 considers a risky return to the asset, although no risk in the terms of
trade. We assume an (approximately) bivariate normal distribution with correlation
coefficient ρyr taking on different values to allow for different forms of covariance.
For simplicity, all variables are independently and identically distributed over time9.
Note that the values chosen imply a coefficient of variation in asset returns and in
income of 0.20. Case 3 considers a safe return to the asset, but risk in the terms of
trade. Again, an (approximately) bivariate normal distribution with correlation
coefficient ρyp is assumed. All variables are independently and identically distributed
over time. The coefficient of variation of the terms of trade is also assumed to be 0.20.
(Case 4 and 5 are discussed below.)

7
In particular, we approximate the normal distribution using 10 power points taken as mean values for
each of the corresponding deciles of the distribution. In this way, we allow the computations to
converge rather faster, but also avoid the problem of negative incomes, inherent if we assume the
normal distribution.
8
It is evaluated at zero assets and with income and asset prices equal to mean values.
9
Deaton (1992) introduces another complication: autocorrelation in income over time. In general, he
finds that this makes self-insurance via savings far more costly, since much higher asset holdings have
to be kept to obtain the same insurance (since bad years will come in sequence). We can expect that
introducing autocorrelation in our simulations would have given exactly this effect, increasing the risk
premium that remains after self-insurance.

10
Table 3 Values for simulations used
Case Assumptions used Description
Case 1: yt ~ N(µy, σy)= N(50, 10) Safe assets, with
safe asset constant exchange rate
pt ≡ 1, ∀t=1,…20. between consumption
and assets.
rt ≡ 0.05, ∀t
Case 2: ((1+rt,), yt) ~ i.i.d.N2(µr , µy, σr, σy, ρyr) Bivariate normally
Covariate risk = N2(1.05, 50, 0.21, 10, ρyr) distributed asset returns
in asset returns rt and income yt. Asset
ρyr ∈ {-1, -0.5, 0, 0.5, 1} terms of trade pt
constant. Covariance
pt ≡ 1, ∀t=1,…20. between income and
asset returns possible.
Case 3: (pt,yt) ~ i.i.d. N2(µp, µy, σp , σy, ρyp) Bivariate normally
Covariate terms = N2(1.00, 50, 0.20, 10, ρyp) distributed asset terms
of trade risk of trade pt and income
ρyp ∈ {-1, -0.5, 0, 0.5, 1} yt. Asset return rt safe.
Covariance between
rt ≡ 0.05, ∀t=1,…20. terms of trade and
income possible.
Case 4: As in 2 but At ∈ , pt=10 Case 2 but lumpy asset
Covariate risk to be bought and sold in
in asset returns, units of 10 (1/5 of mean
lumpy assets income)

Case 5: As in 3 but At ∈ , µp =10 Case 3 but lumpy asset

Covariate terms to be bought and sold in
of trade risk, lumpy units with mean
lumpy assets price of 10

11
Table 4 Risk premia with imperfect assets under liquidity constraints
Case Correlation Risk premium as a One minus the risk
coefficient between percentage of the premium, as a
the asset and mean of the income percentage of risk
income risk process process y.a premium of the
(ρ) benchmark.b
Benchmark: n.a. 19.8 0.0
Income risk, yt = ct
(no assets)
Case 1: None 6.4 67.6
safe asset

Case 2: -0.5 5.7 71.3

Covariate risk in 0 7.0 64.7
asset returns 0.5 8.2 58.5
1 9.4 52.5
Case 3: -0.5 -0.7 103.7
Covariate terms of 0 9.9 49.9
trade risk 0.5 16.7 15.7
1 19.8 0.1
Case 4:
Case 2 with 0 9.6 51.4
lumpy asset 0.5 10.6 46.7
1 11.5 41.9
Case 5: -0.5 1.7 91.5
Case 3 with 0 12.5 36.8
lumpy asset 0.5 19.0 4.1
1 19.8 0

Simulations using equation (4), (backward solution) with logarithmic utility, T=20, δ=0.05.
a
= the amount the household is willing to give up in the first period to get rid of all uncertainty.
b
= the percentage of the risk premium that is recovered by savings, i.e. the value in column (3) divided
by 19.8 percent.

The results of the numerical simulations using these assumptions are given in table 4.
In each period, there is a draw of income and if applicable, of the terms of trade of
assets and of the rate of return. On the basis of this information and assets carried over
from last period, the household will decide its optimal consumption and asset holding.
The algorithm uses the optimal program, based on the backward solution of condition
(4). The results show the consequences of risk in assets and covariance with income.
First, comparing the benchmark with the case of a safe asset, we notice that two-thirds
of the risk premium is recovered through self-insurance. However, if we introduce
risk in the returns to assets, then this risk premium goes up, unless income and asset
returns are negatively correlated. Negative correlation (ρyr<0) simply means that
whenever one wants to sell assets to smooth consumption due to a bad income draw,
asset returns happen to be higher, so they are obviously more attractive and useful.
Positive covariance gradually reduces the effectiveness of the asset as a buffer for
consumption. When income and asset returns are perfectly correlated (ρyr=1), the risk

12
premium has increased by almost half. Self-insurance is still useful – the risk premium
is still less than half than in the benchmark.

The situation changes when the risk is in the terms of trade or exchange rate between
assets and consumption or income. Recall that positive covariance means pricy assets
whenever income is high (and households want to buy), and very low exchange rates
when income is low (and households want to sell). It is clear that terms of trade risk
reduces the ability to smooth consumption via self-insurance. Even without covariate
income and asset prices, this source of risk is very costly, increasing the risk-premium
by half relative to the case of a safe asset: the non-zero probability that you may need
to sell cheap and buy at high prices is causing this. Also, with a positive covariance
between income and the asset terms of trade, self-insurance quickly loses its
attractiveness – even with a correlation coefficient ρpy of 0.5, very little benefit can be
obtained from savings in this form. Although these are results based on numerical
solutions, the difference is between risk in the returns to assets and in the terms of
trade of assets is intrinsic, and not just dependent on the numerical example used. In
the latter case, with positive covariance, not only results a bad draw for low asset
values when you would want to sell them (this is also the case when there is a bad
draw in asset returns). Also, when income is high, windfall income is transformed into
assets only at a high price, when terms of trade risk is present (which is not the case
when we have risk in asset returns). In other words, the current asset terms of trade
affect the effectiveness of transforming income into assets.

There is some evidence of household behaviour consistent with these predictions.

During the 1984-85 famine, households in Ethiopia were observed rather to cut their
consumption to dangerously low levels rather than sell their assets, when asset terms
of trade had totally collapsed. This is consistent with the model described above: the
return in terms of consumption of keeping on to their assets is very high, since at
present very little consumption can be obtained. Also, Czukas et al. (1998) present
evidence, consistent with this model. They find that livestock sales (both cattle and
small stock) combined offset at most thirty percent, and probably closer to only fifteen
percent of the crop income shortfall endured during severe drought.

• Access to relatively safe and profitable assets, which might be useful for
consumption smoothing, may also be limited. Lumpiness in assets may be a reason
why the poor cannot protect themselves easily via assets.

While risk in returns and terms of trade may limit in certain circumstances the use of
assets to smooth consumption, there are examples where assets contribute to
consumption smoothing. Rosenzweig and Wolpin (1993) have shown that bullock
sales contribute to consumption smoothing in the South Indian ICRISAT villages,
although Lim and Townsend (1994) argue that crop inventory appears to be the main
strategy. Access to assets for smoothing may however not be self-evident. For
example, buying and selling cattle is generally recognised a common strategy to cope
with income fluctuations in many rural areas (Binswanger and McIntire (1987),
Davies (1996)). However, a relatively large proportion of households often do not
own any. Dercon (1998) finds that only half the households in a sample in Western
Tanzania own cattle, even though cattle are important in the farming system and in
their culture. The explanation is not that the others simply choose to enter into other

13
activities; rather, investing into livestock requires a sizeable surplus: livestock are
lumpy. A cow, for example, costs about a fifth of mean crop income. Cattle ownership
is generally determined by endowments in male labour and land, suggesting that those
with a poorer endowment cannot generate sufficient means to enter into cattle rearing,
leaving them relatively more exposed to income risk.

The consequences of lumpy assets are easily illustrated via simulations. In table 3 and
4 we have added two more simulations: case 2 and case 3 are repeated but with lumpy
assets, so that they cost (on average) one-fifth of mean income. One can see that the
risk premium increases quite significantly, and that the effectiveness of using the asset
is reduced, especially if positive covariance is present. Dercon (1998) present other
simulations, such as on the number of periods that a poor household may have no
assets left to use as a buffer stock, exposing it to the consequences of bad shocks.

• Risk in returns to assets and especially in the terms of trade between assets and
consumption, covariate with household income, and assets that are lumpy, affect
the possibilities for self-insurance. Consequently, policies that influence asset
market risks could be beneficial to households attempting to deal with shocks.

Despite the fact that the simulations are numerical, and partly dependent on the actual
values used, we can definitely conclude that risk in asset values, whether in the returns
or in their terms of trade, affects the ability to self-insure. Furthermore, the largest
effects stem not from risk per se, but from the covariance between asset values and
income. Positive covariance is not unrealistic: when an economy-wide shock occurs
incomes are likely to decline but so also will asset values. From these simulations, we
find a large reduction in the opportunity to effectively self-insure.

• Policies could include providing more attractive and diversified savings

instruments. Microfinance initiatives should put savings for self-insurance on the
agenda. Macroeconomic stability during income downturns would also allow self-
insurance to function better.

Providing households access to better, a larger set and less risky assets should avoid
some of these problems. Integrating asset markets with the wider economy could
avoid much of the often-observed covariate movements in asset prices and incomes.
For example, if in rural Africa or India, holding other assets, such as low cost
financial savings via post-office accounts etc. could be facilitated, then communities
could use alternatives to animals to store wealth. Introducing a focus on savings for
self-insurance in the booming number of initiatives related to microfinance operations
could be of help.

The terms of trade risk between assets and consumption is of particular concern. This
has partly to do with macroeconomic stability. For example, terms of trade declines
often coincide with consumer price increases relative to asset prices (e.g. in the
famines in Bangladesh in 1974, in Ethiopia in 1985). Low inflation and exchange rate
stability could reduce these large shocks in relative prices when incomes are low.
Policies that limit the macroeconomic effects of common shocks would enhance self-
insurance.

14
3. Income smoothing strategies

• Income smoothing can be achieved by income portfolio adjustments.

In this section, we consider income smoothing, i.e. strategies which reduce the risk in
the income process. Often, the strategy considered is diversification of income
sources. Theoretically, as long as the different income sources are not perfectly
covariate (i.e. they have a correlation coefficient below 1), then there will be a
reduction in total income risk from combining two income sources with the same
mean and variance. Stated like this, there appear to be no costs involved: mean
income is the same. It is useful therefore to consider also another income-based
strategy, in which mean income is reduced to obtain lower risk. One could refer to this
as income-skewing: resources are allocated towards low risk-low return activities. In
the extreme, this will not show up as diversification: as Collier and Gunning (1999)
argue, the poor may well be more specialised in a low risk-low return activity. In this
section we will discuss how effective income smoothing is, the limitations to using of
(mean preserving) diversification, and the determinants and costs of diversification
and income skewing.

• In practice relatively little income smoothing (via income portfolio adjustments) is

achieved by poorer households.

Many studies have emphasised the extent to which households diversify income
sources. Across the developing world, farm households achieve a substantial share of
income from non-farm activities (Reardon et al. (1994), and the many references in
the study, Collier and Lal (1986), Collier and Gunning (1999)). Reardon et al. (1994,
p.240) report an average share of 39 percent in across 8 countries in rural West-Africa.
Besides non-agricultural activities, households fragment their land holdings into many
plots, grow different crops or engage in local farm wage employment. But is
diversification effective in practice? Townsend (1995, p.85) suggests that in the
ICRISAT villages in India, substantial scope for diversification exists, but in practice
relatively little takes place. Or at least, income remains highly variable. Other
examples were provided above.

• Income diversification for effective risk-reduction appears limited. Observed

diversification patterns are often not aimed at reducing risk. Households face
entry constraints to enter into profitable activities.

What are the limits of income diversification strategies? First, it should be emphasised
that, contrary to the impression created, combining different income sources is not
necessarily meant to handle risk. For example, different activities may be conducted at
different times (e.g. seasonal activities), providing income across the year by serving
to smooth labour over time. Also, activities often described as risk-spreading, such as
intercropping, may in fact serve to increase returns, even at the cost of increased
variability (Carter (1991)).

15
Secondly, while in ‘normal’ years, farm and off-farm activities may be relatively
uncorrelated, during crises, they may move together. Since downturns could be severe,
this would severely limit the use of diversification. There is evidence that this is the
case. Czukas et al. (1998) find evidence that non-farm income is also positively
correlated with shocks affecting crop income: drought adversely affects not only crop
income but also non-farm income. They refer to Sen’s analysis of famine – crop
failure leads to a collapse of the demand for local services and crafts, limiting the use
of diversification to handle risk.

Thirdly, and probably most importantly, non-agricultural activities or profitable

alternative agricultural activities are not accessed easily. Most effectively-risk-
reducing activities with a reasonable return cannot be easily entered. Entry constraints
could take the form of working capital needs, skills requirements etc. Reardon et al.
(1988) report that richer household have a higher share of nonfarm income in Burkina
Faso, i.e. the poor seem less diversified. Reardon (1997) suggest that entry constraints
exist in Kenya. Hussein and Nelson (1998) give numerous other examples.

Dercon and Krishnan (1996) look explicitly at the role of different constraints to enter
into activities in Tanzania and Ethiopia. They find that the poor typically enter into
activities with low entry costs: firewood collection, charcoal, collecting dung cakes,
casual agricultural wage employment, etc. Entry into high return non-crop activities,
such as cattle rearing or shop keeping, is restricted to richer households, presumably
with access to capital. Non-agricultural wage employment is restricted to those with
education. When asked, most households would like to invest into cattle rearing and
to a lesser extent, trade and business. More recent data from Ethiopia on non-farm
business activities and the investments typically needed to enter into these affected
seems to confirm the relatively high capital needs for some activities. While some
activities require virtually no investment, others where quite costly. Median
investment into charcoal making, dungcakes collection, handicrafts, weaving or food
processing was between 0 and 20 birr (3 U.S. dollars), but the returns to these
activities are relatively low. More lucrative activities, such starting a shop, entering
into livestock trade or transport services required 300 to 550 birr (about $45 to $80).
A mature cow costs about 400 birr ($60). These are large sums in an economy with
mean per adult income below $200 (own calculation from data from Ethiopian Rural
Household Survey 1995).

Dercon (1998) looked further at the evidence on whether activity choice towards high
return activities in rural Tanzania is affected by entry constraints or by comparative
advantage, and finds the former far more relevant. Risk considerations matter as well,
but only forcing the poorer households to enter into low return activities. This leads us
to the next point.

• Income risk reduction often comes at a cost. Income skewing is likely if less
protection is available through assets. The long-term consequences for the asset-
poor are lower average incomes and a higher income gap relative to asset-rich
households.

Profitable or mean income preserving diversification is therefore not easily possible.

Collier and Gunning (1999, p.83), building on the evidence discussed above, suggest

16
that the poor have to enter into low return-capital extensive activities, since high
return activities require capital. The poor are less diversified despite facing more
serious consequences of bad income draws with limited insurance and credit market
imperfections. The implication is that many diversification or income skewing
strategies are actually mean income reducing, making them less interesting for
households: lower risk will have to be weighed against low returns, providing another
reason for the limited income smoothing achieved in practice.

Another implication is that income-based strategies are directly linked to asset-based

strategies (and other forms of protections offered, such as by informal insurance). As
analysed by Eswaran and Kotwal (1989), credit can serve as insurance substitute but
credit market imperfections usually imply collateralised lending. The consequence is
that asset-poor households cannot enter into high-risk activities, since downside risks
are too high, while asset rich households do not face this problem. Those with access
to (liquid) assets can borrow in terms of crisis, or, if credit is absent, sell them as part
of a buffer stock strategy. To handle income risk, asset-poor households will have to
enter low-risk, low-return activities. The consequence is further impoverishment, or at
least increased inequality.

There is evidence that this indeed is happening. Morduch (1990), using the ICRISAT
sample, shows that asset-poor households devote a larger share of land to safer
traditional varieties of rice and castor than to riskier but high-return varieties10.
Dercon (1996) finds that households with limited liquid asset (livestock) grow
proportionately more sweet potatoes, a low-return, low risk crop. A household with an
average livestock holding has a proportion of land allocated to sweet potatoes which
is 20 percent smaller than for a household with no liquid assets. The return per adult is
25 percent higher for the crop portfolio of the wealthiest group compared to the
poorest quintile. Choosing a less risky crop portfolio has substantial consequences for
incomes.

Bliss and Stern (1982) found that fertiliser was underutilised in Palanpur, India.
Fertiliser, as many purchased inputs in general, can be considered high return but also
high risk, since they increase yields, but by using less, investment losses in bad years
are reduced. Rosenzweig and Binswanger (1993) suggests that the portfolio of
activities (and investments) in the ICRISAT villages in India is affected by high risk.
Increasing the coefficient of variation of rainfall timing by one standard deviation
would reduce farm profits for the poorest quartile by 35 percent; for the richest
quartile the effect is negligible. Efficiency is affected and average incomes of the poor
are reduced. Wealthier farmers are not affected and achieve therefore higher incomes.
The long-term wealth distribution is affected: 54 percent of wealth is held by the top
20 percent of households.

Jalan and Ravallion (1998) use data on China to test other behavioural responses.
They find that increased income risk limits out migration of labour (presumably to
reduce the risk of family labour shortage), although no effect on schooling decisions is
found. Also they do not find that the holdings of unproductive, liquid assets are not

10
Note that he finds a significant effect on plot diversification but not on a crop diversification index,
which may well be linked with some of the points made above.

17
increased in response to risk, although this could be due to the presence of productive
liquid assets (such as livestock).

Note that these results do not follow from differences in risk preferences. Controlling
for preferences, the poor select a low risk-low return portfolio, while the rich take on a
more risky set of activities. The results are related to the constraints on the options
available to households. Kochar (1997) states for example in the Indian ICRISAT-
villages “the set of options faced by farmers offers little role for preferences” (p.159).
See also Morduch (1990), Dercon (1998) or Dercon and Krishnan (1996) for a
discussion.

• Several income-based strategies are only invoked when a crisis looms. These
(income) ‘coping’ or ‘survival’ strategies are especially important when the shock
is economy-wide.

When a large negative occurs, the usual household activities may not yield sufficient
income. If all households in a community or region are affected, local income earning
activities are unlikely to be sufficient. Examples of these crises are drought, floods,
but also large economic shocks, such as those affected parts of Asia in recent years.

Kochar (1997) argues that labour supply adjustments, rather than asset or other
strategies, are the main strategy used by households in India to cope with negative
idiosyncratic shocks. Increased labour force participation in response to economic
shocks is also found elsewhere. Moser (1998) reports increased female labour market
participation and child labour in communities in Ecuador and Zambia (p.8). Jacoby
and Skoufias (1997) find that in the Indian ICRISAT villages, children are taken out
of school in response to adverse income shocks to work, resulting in low hum capital
accumulation.

A lot of attention has been given to these strategies in times of famine, such as those
affecting the Horn of Africa or the Sahelian countries in the mid-1980s. In some
cases, the strategies are just an intensification of the ‘usual’ risk-coping strategies; in
other cases, additional action is taken to prevent destitution11. Dessalegn Rahmato
(1991), Corbett (1988), Davies (1996), De Waal (1987) report many examples,
including temporary migration for jobs, longer working days, collecting wild foods,
collecting forest products for sale such as firewood, etc. As an illustration of the scale
of involvement in these activities, table 5 gives some details on survival strategies
used in Ethiopia. It gives the frequency of households using a particular strategy
during the famine of the mid-1980s in Ethiopia, in six different villages across the
country.

11
A similar intensification of asset-based strategies can be noted during serious crises. While liquid
assets are used to deal with fluctuations in reasonably bad years, when several bad years have followed,
one observes more productive assets to be sold. For example, during the Ethiopian famine in the mid-
1980s, households started to sell ploughs and other tools, as well as furniture, utensils and any other
assets they had (Dessalegn Rahmato (1991)).

18
Table 5 Coping strategies employed during the worst period of 1984/85 and
subsequent crisis in 1980s in Ethiopia. Percentage of households reporting
the use of particular strategy (n=520).
Cutting wild foods sold sold Feeding migrated food aid
V illage back food assets livestock Camp for work
Dinki 100% 78% 26% 80% 1% 2% 84%
D Berhan 52% 2% 8% 93% 1% 1% 0%
Adele 89% 80% 58% 8% 15% 5% 42%
Korod 93% 62% 26% 38% 1% 21% 7%
Gara Godo 93% 99% 78% 86% 27% 6% 56%
Domaa 92% 74% 45% 31% 1% 3% 36%
Own calculations using data from IFPRI-survey, 1989

• To conclude, diversifying income sources is useful but for the poor it may come at
a high cost. Observing specialisation does not necessarily imply that the
household follows a high-risk strategy. Also, entry constraints may limit the
diversification that can be achieved, leaving only low return activities free to the
poor. Income portfolios must be seen in relation to the asset portfolio and other
options available: a risky, specialised portfolio may mean lower consumption risk
than a diversified portfolio, depending on the asset position.

4. Informal risk-sharing and safety nets

• There has been increasing interest in the empirical analysis of informal risk-
sharing and theoretical modelling on the sustainability and consequences of these
arrangements.

Beyond income-based strategies and self-insurance, households use a variety of

informal risk-sharing arrangements to cope with the consequences of risk. Typically,
they involve a system of mutual assistance between family networks or communities.
In recent years, research into the extent of risk-sharing obtained by these institutions
has boomed. Some of this literature has had a clear empirical emphasis. Central
questions addressed have been whether there is any empirical evidence of complete
risk-sharing both in communities in developing country as in a wide variety of
settings, including the U.S.12 and how (partial or complete) risk-sharing is obtained.
The tests have generally found that complete risk-sharing has to be rejected, including
in the U.S., in communities in India, in extended families in the PSID or even within
nuclear households in Ethiopia (Mace (1991), Cochrane (1991), Townsend (1994),
Hayashi et al. (1996), Dercon and Krishnan (1999)).

These studies tend to test the presence of outcomes similar to those obtained by risk-
sharing, although it cannot distinguish results due to self-insurance (i.e. accumulating
and depleting assets) and informal insurance (or insurance-like behaviour, via
transfers or credit). Nevertheless, there is evidence of partial risk-sharing via transfer
behaviour in different countries or state-contingent (‘quasi’)-credit. Udry (1994)
present evidence on state-contingent loans in Northern Nigeria. Lund and Fafchamps

12
Note that this is the question that macroeconomists would love to see us prove: indeed, complete risk-
sharing via formal and informal mechanisms would provide one of the few possible justifications to
work with representative consumer models in macroeconomics…

19
(1997) show that loans and transfers play a role in risk-sharing. Grimard (1992)
ordered the LSMS Côte d’Ivoire data by tribe and appears to find more stable
consumption by tribes than for the full data set, suggesting that tribal networks allow
smoothing over space, including via transfers. Full risk-sharing is rejected, however.
Rosenzweig (1988) finds that poor households marry daughters deliberately out over
space. Since covariance in income risk is likely to decline with distance, remittance
flows between areas in found to contribute to smoother consumption, when either
experiences a negative shock. Other evidence on the role of transfer is coping with
shocks is in Ravallion and Dearden (1988) and Lucas and Stark (1985).

The theoretical literature has focused on the role of information on the possibilities for
and consequences of risk-sharing arrangements (Hoff (1996)) and especially on the
nature and sustainability of (partial or complete) risk-sharing arrangements given the
lack of formal enforcement (Coate and Ravallion, Thomas and Worrall (1994),
Platteau (1997), Ligon et al. (1997), Attanasio et Rios-Rull (1999)). Ligon et al.
(1997) shows evidence that the constrained risk-sharing model fits the ICRISAT-data
for India better.

• Risk-sharing can be viewed as the cross-sectional equivalent of consumption

smoothing over time.

The key prediction of the full risk-sharing model is that marginal utilities across
individuals in a risk-sharing group move in lock-step. This is obviously similar to the
prediction of a permanent income/life-cycle model without liquidity constraints (as
above), where marginal utilities over time for an individual are equated, conditional
on appropriate discounting. The existence of full risk-sharing implies that all group
resources are effectively pooled, although the theory is agnostic about the who gets
what share of the joint resources. Risk-sharing implies that any unpredicted event is
covered by a state-contingent transfer from other members in the group. From this it
should be obvious that the group can insure idiosyncratic shocks, not common shocks.
It would then be tempting to suggest that other means should be used to insure
common shocks - savings or public safety nets should be developed to cope with these
risks. However, the consequences of these alternatives should be well understood.

• In the absence of enforcement problems, the existence of better savings

opportunities and a public safety net providing transfer when common shocks
occur, could improve welfare without crowding out the informal insurance
arrangement. A transfer-based safety net is, however, likely to crowd out private
(precautionary) savings.

Suppose that full risk-sharing is always feasible for the group. The easiest assumption
to justify this, is that besides full information, strong social norms exist that punish
deviations, so that it is never better to renege on the agreement to share risks13. If
saving is possible, then households would have incentives to build up assets to cope
with hardship. However, if they know that they are locked into a risk-sharing
arrangement, then assets will only be built up to cope with common shocks, since the

13
This is obviously not satisfactory as an assumption, and will be relaxed below. For the time being, it
provides a useful way to develop the arguments.

20
risk-sharing agreement would continue to handle idiosyncratic shocks. Effectively,
this would be equivalent to building up assets at the group level for self-insurance of
the group to cope with common shocks. The corollary, the implications for savings
when a group enters into a risk-sharing agreement, would be to reduce precautionary
savings, since idiosyncratic shocks could now be insured via other means.

The introduction of a public safety net based on transfer and activated when a
common shock occurs, has similar effects. If it only deals with common shocks, then
the risk-sharing arrangement would not be crowded-out, but function for idiosyncratic
shocks. If savings are possible, then the introduction of a public safety net would
reduce precautionary savings, since overall risk has been reduced, which by definition
means lower precautionary savings (Deaton (1991)). Private savings would be
‘crowded-out’. These savings are generally kept in liquid form and are not very
suitable as basis for credit multiplication. However, if one worries about this
crowding-out effect, then improving savings opportunities may be superior in some
circumstances to a transfer-based public safety net.

Finally, if a public safety net is also available for dealing with idiosyncratic shocks,
then some displacement of the informal insurance system is likely, especially if the
safety net provides net transfers into the community (rather than an actuarially fair
insurance system)14.

• Informal insurance arrangements are likely to have to be self-enforcing, imposing

sustainability constraints. Circumstances in which risk-sharing arrangements may
be sustained are, inter alia: a low discount rate of the future, high frequency of
interactions, situations in which idiosyncratic shocks are more frequent relative to
other shocks.

Enforcement through norms alone is unlikely to be sufficient. In recent years, formal

models of informal insurance arrangements have clarified the conditions in which
agreements could be sustained (Coate and Ravallion (1993), Thomas and Worrall
(1994), Ligon et al. (1997)15). The models rely on specifying an enforceability (or
sustainability) constraint in each state, in which individuals must find it in their
interest to remain in the scheme, rather than going it alone. Punishment for reneging
on the agreement is exclusion from the scheme in the future. These models
systematically find that risk-sharing arrangements can be sustained if individuals
discount future returns at a low rate, so that any future benefits matter in deciding to
enter or to remain in the scheme. Also, they rely on a large number of shocks and
interactions; idiosyncratic shocks can be insured, or in general, shocks in which a
large number of members are not affected by a shock relative to the number of
members affected.

14
Cox and Jimenez (1991) find that in Peru, formal social security payments reduced private transfers
from the young to the old by 20 percent.
15
For a discussion of the differences in some of the models, see Platteau (1997)). In Ravallion and
Coate (1993) the state-contingent transfers are fixed; in Thomas and Worrall (1994), an updating rule
for risk-sharing is obtained, which changes according to changes in the participation constraint over
time.

21
• Evaluating the effects of alternative coping mechanisms such as savings, or policy
interventions such as providing better savings instruments or public safety nets
needs to take into account their effect on incentives to sustain the agreement
rather than to go it alone. It is possible that opportunities for precautionary
savings or a public safety net would actually be welfare-reducing and displace the
informal insurance arrangement by more than one to one.

The standard models do not allow for self-insurance. Introducing the possibility of
savings in the model provides better insurance to individuals to cope with common
shocks. However, it will also affect the outcome when leaving the arrangement, since
self-insurance can reduce the consequences of both idiosyncratic and common shocks
(and as was shown in section 2, rather substantial insurance could be obtained in this
way). Ligon et al. (1998) have shown that it may then not be optimal to sustain the
agreement and the risk-sharing arrangement may break down. Indeed, it can be shown
that fewer agreements would be sustained. Unless the welfare effect of having access
to savings increases beyond the loss from the breakdown of the arrangement, welfare
would be lower after the introduction of savings. Self-insurance via private savings
could crowd out the informal insurance scheme by more than one-to-one, i.e. more is
lost than gained.

This principle of the possible ambiguous consequences of alternative insurance

opportunities on the informal insurance arrangements and on welfare is more general,
if the alternatives result in improving an individual’s outcome when reneging on the
agreement, i.e. the enforceability constraints are affected. In that case, more than one-
to-one crowding out of the informal arrangement could occur and overall welfare
could be reduced (although this is not necessarily so). In particular, Attanasio and
Rios-Rull (1999) consider the consequences of introducing a safety net to deal with
common shocks. Since the insurance of some part of the total risk faced by
households improves the households’ autarky position, it is possible that more than
one-to-one crowding out occurs and total welfare is reduced by the safety net.

• Any policy intervention that improves an individual’s position outside a private

group-based informal risk-sharing arrangement may provide incentives to break
down the informal arrangement. Targeted interventions that target only some
members of communities or groups could be particularly counterproductive.

Policy interventions, such as a public safety net, are presented with a dilemma. If
informal arrangements are present, then any outside intervention that provides an
alternative source of insurance may displace the existing informal arrangements. The
reason is again that the individual’s outside option – part of the enforceability
constraint – is likely to be affected.

Currently, many safety net interventions are targeted: particular groups, e.g. women or
landless workers tend to be targeted by schemes. Public works employment schemes
are set up for able-bodied people; direct transfers target to the ill and infirm, etc.
Targeted interventions has become part of the standard safety net package supported
by international donors, including e.g. in the current crisis in Indonesia or in the
recurrent local famine situations in parts of Africa. Note that they may affect current
informal systems since they affect the enforceability constraint by changing the

22
outside options available to members. If one is concerned about sustaining informal
(traditional) insurance systems, more attention should be paid to understand the
existing mechanisms16.

To avoid these problems, schemes that target groups rather than individuals, e.g.
employment schemes for the group or the whole community involved in an informal
scheme may be more appropriate. This of course requires detailed information about
the informal schemes operating (Attanasio and Rios-Rull (1999)). If the scheme only
deals with common and not idiosyncratic shocks, none of the crowding-out or welfare
effects should apply. Of course, this presents substantial design and information
problems.

• Group-based savings schemes could provide a useful alternative or complement if

one is concerned about crowding-out. The possibly negative welfare effects can be
avoided.

An alternative could be to encourage and support groups involved in informal

insurance arrangements to develop group-based self-insurance mechanisms. Indeed,
the standard distinction that individual-based self-insurance can deal best with
common shocks, while informal arrangements are suitable for idiosyncratic shocks, is
misleading. Groups have incentives to self-insure as well, especially if there are
economies of scale in asset holdings (e.g. transactions costs, opportunities for risk-
pooling of assets, etc.). Groups could build up assets in good years, to deplete in bad
years for the benefit of its members, using transfer rules and mechanisms parallel to
the risk-sharing arrangement for idiosyncratic shocks17.

If individuals can only benefit from the savings when part of the group, then the
negative incentive effects working via the enforceability constraints of the agreement,
would not exist. Groups could then extend their brief to deal to the extent possible,
with common shocks as well.

Policy interventions could provide incentives for this type of behaviour. Better savings
instruments, access to banking, but also macroeconomic stability would assist this
process. One could also endeavour to include a more important savings-for-insurance
element in group-based credit programmes, a current favourite in donor interventions.

• Whether the crowding-out and potential negative welfare effects of interventions

on informal insurance mechanisms are significant is an empirical question. If
common shocks are dominant and if groups and communities rather than just
individuals are targeted, these negative effects are likely to be less significant.

Ultimately, more empirical research should shed light on the very groups and
institutions engaging in informal arrangements, their functioning and role and their

16
Note that self-targeted schemes may not necessarily solve the problem: they also affect the
individuals’ outside option. Of course, the lower the payments in the scheme, the less they will affect
the enforceability constraints. This is simply equivalent to providing lower insurance.
17
Indeed, in some traditional societies, this type of group behaviour was common. An example could be
found in Western Tanzania (Sukumaland), where a community food stock, run by the village head,
provided protection for the village when a large-scale crisis occurred.

23
potential for expansion. Also, we need more work on whether and how these informal
arrangements are affected by interventions and whether alternative schemes can be
designed. It is likely that interventions should especially be cautious in contexts
conducive to these private informal institutions, such as tightly-knit groups affected by
substantial idiosyncratic shocks. In a context where common shocks are dominant and
if groups or communities can be targeted, then interventions are more likely to be
beneficial in net terms18.

5. Monitoring income risk, vulnerability and coping strategies

• Standard quantitative poverty analysis assumes that consumption is smooth. If

smoothing is not possible, especially when large negative shocks occur, then
alternative measures of poverty and vulnerability need to be explored.

Income as a measure of welfare to identify poverty has long been recognised to be

problematic. As an alternative, current consumption, as found in cross-section
surveys, has been used for most quantitative poverty analysis. The argument is that
consumption is smoother than income and due to concavity of utility (risk-aversion),
households have strong incentives to keep consumption smooth. However, the
combination of high income risk and the observed inability of households to keep
consumption smooth via risk-management or coping strategies, especially when a
serious shock hits them, would suggest that alternative measures are needed19.

• If inter-temporal data are available, broader definitions can be used to describe

vulnerability. Aggregate measures of ‘vulnerability’ can be obtained.

If data are available on consumption over time, it is possible to take into account that
some households may only be poor in some years. For example, one could distinguish
those that are poor in each period from those that are poor in only some of the periods
sampled. In all panel data sets on developing countries currently available, the large
consumption fluctuations in the data result in a large number of the households
moving in and out of poverty. For example, in the Indian ICRISAT data set, about 25

18
There is some evidence that these issues may be relevant in Ethiopia. While generally the success of
NGO programmes is rather limited in parts of the country, one NGO particularly targeted traditional
funeral societies as the basis for their interventions, providing assistance and credit to members, using
rules parallel to those of the funeral society, apparently rather succesfully. Communities and groups
may also be concerned that safety nets affect their community in a negative way. In Ethiopia, due to
practical reasons, community councils were instructed to select workers among the poorest for many
public works employment generation programmes. Apparently, targeting was in the end limited – the
communities allowed virtually everybody to participate on a rotational basis. While other reasons are
bound to be relevant as well, it would be consistent with attempting not to break down other risk-
sharing arrangements.
19
Alternatives to consumption as a welfare indicator suffer from the same problems, despite apparent
suggestions to the contrary. Alternative measures, such as nutrition, food expenditure, expenditure on
specific commodities (such as health or education), and even measures such as health or enrolment into
schools would suffer from the same problems. See the evidence on education and nutrition quoted
above (Jalan and Ravallion (1998), Jacoby and Skoufias (1998), Dercon and Krishnan (1999), Foster
(1995)).

24
percent of the poor in each period move out of poverty in the next period. Gaiha and
Deolalikar (1998) reported that only 12 percent of households were never poor. Jalan
and Ravallion (1996) reported that about half the poor in each year were not poor on
average in their sample form Rural China. Using data from rural Ethiopia, Dercon
and Krishnan (1999b) report that while poverty remains largely the same on average
between 1994 and 1995 at about 40 percent, about a third of the poor are different
households in each year. In all these data sets, the longer the time period considered,
the fewer the households that appear to be always poor20.

One could define ‘vulnerable households’ as those liable to fall under the poverty line
over time, even though they need not be always poor. The evidence from panel data
sets would suggest that a far higher percentage of people is vulnerable than observed
to be poor in a particular year.

Another way to approach the problem is due to Ravallion (1988). He has proposed a
means to capture the distinction between chronic and transient poverty. Using
consumption as the underlying welfare measure, the chronically poor are those with
average consumption below the poverty line. Transient poverty for an individual is the
average poverty over time of this individual minus chronic poverty. Formally, for the
case of the Foster-Greer-Thorbecke poverty measures, chronic poverty Pαc can be
1 n
defined as: Pαc = (Pαci ) , with Pαci individual chronic poverty, defined over mean
n i =1
α
æ c ö
individual consumption over time c it as P α = çç1 − it if c it < z and zero otherwise.
ci

è z
Individual transient poverty equals Pα =Pα - Pα , in which Pαi is the expected value
tr,i i ci

(or the average over time) of individual poverty, defined in each period t as
α
æ cit ö
P α = ç1 −
it
if cit < z and zero otherwise.
è z

These definitions mean that poverty can be decomposed into a transient and chronic
part. For example, using the squared poverty gap, Ravallion and Jalan (1996) report
that roughly half of total (inter-temporally aggregate) poverty in their Chinese rural
panel data set covering 1985-90 is contributed by transient poverty. They find that
transient poverty is highest for those with average consumption near the poverty line
and about 40 percent of transient poverty is found among those not poor on average.
But almost all transient poverty is for households whose mean consumption is no
more than 50 percent above the poverty line. Again, this means that in any given year,
the poor will exclude some that are at risk to be poor in the near future21. Some of the

20
One needs to be cautious when interpreting the evidence on widespread poverty transitions and
fluctuations. Measurement error in the data would show up as increased movement up and down the
poverty line, increasing the apparent mobility. Still, since most studies can find variables correlated
with the fluctuations which are unlikely to be correlated measurement error in consumption, it is likely
that a substantial part of the observed consumption fluctuations are genuine. See for example Deolalikar
and Gaiha (1993), Baulch and McCulloch (1998), Dercon and Krishnan (1999).
21
Or, to put it more correctly, given that Ravallion and Jalan (1996) use the squared poverty gap (P2),
the non-poor in any given year will contribute to poverty in other years.

25
non-poor tend to have relatively high average consumption over time (but within
bounds).

One could argue that those who are not chronically poor, i.e. who have average
consumption levels above mean consumption, are not or less ‘deserving’ attention.
However, if these outcomes in particular periods cannot be avoided, i.e. they cannot
smooth consumption, due to constraints on their risk-management and risk-coping
strategies, then this position is hard to maintain. The empirical discussion has to focus
on whether this transient poverty is due to preferences (‘poor’ choices) or constraints
on their choices. The available evidence discussed above may well lead us to consider
that their choices are indeed often constrained.

In looking at poverty transitions in the currently available data sets, one may be
tempted to interpret these fluctuations as closely linked to risk and shocks. The
decomposition of poverty into transient and chronic poverty similarly suggests that
transient poverty is linked to risk. However, this links needs to be established. Paxson
(1992) links shocks in rainfall directly to income and consumption fluctuations. She
finds that part of the fluctuations are unlikely to be linked to constrained responses
towards shocks.

Dercon and Krishnan (1999) look explicitly at the link between shocks and poverty
transitions, using panel data from Ethiopia. They use a fixed-effects model of
consumption in which changes in consumption are linked to idiosyncratic and
common shocks, such as rainfall shocks, a series of other crop shocks, illness shocks,
shocks to livestock, etc. They find some of the fluctuations appear to be seasonal
responses to prices and labour requirements. Nevertheless, shocks matter. Most areas
in the sample experienced a fairly good harvest in the sample period. In the best
period of the year (the post-harvest period) they find actual poverty of about 33
percent; in the worst period about 40 percent. Using the model and the shock
information, they find however that depending on how good the year is, poverty in the
post-harvest period could be up to 56 percent in the post-harvest period to 60 percent
in the worst period. In other words, given current coping opportunities, a large
percentage of the population would be vulnerable in a bad year, substantially larger
than current poverty estimates from the (relatively good) 1990s would suggest. The
figure of 60 percent may then be considered a good estimate of the ‘population at risk’
in the sample area.

All this points to the limitations of current ‘static’ poverty measures. Measures of
vulnerability, ‘population at risk’, have a useful policy content, as have measures that
distinguish chronic from transient poverty. The former could help the policy debate on
whether poverty is increasing or not – any poverty estimates at different points in time
will reflect the current circumstances, including the effects due to shocks. It is
perfectly possible for poverty figures to be higher in one year relative to the next, but
the vulnerable population may have gone down. Economic policy measures may
increase opportunities to handle risk, e.g. via better access to or better functioning
asset markets and reduce vulnerability. At the same time, a terms of trade shock may
have increased the actual number of poor. While the net effect may have been a
poverty increase, in fact, vulnerability may have decreased.

26
Information on the scale of chronic poverty relative to transient poverty could inform
policy makers on the balance between mean-income increasing economic measures
(‘growth’) relative to opportunities to mitigate fluctuations in income and
consumption – such as safety nets, credit and insurance markets, etc. The size of
transient poverty is a also a significant constraint on the scope for reaching the
chronically poor using targeted anti-poverty policies contingent on current levels of
poverty (Jalan and Ravallion (1996)).

• Targeting assistance to the vulnerable population requires specific kinds of

information. Analysing the characteristics of households experiencing chronic or
transient poverty, or in general, their consumption fluctuations, can provide this
information. Panel data are required here.

Ravallion and Jalan (1996) investigated the determinants of transient and chronic
poverty in rural China in a (reduced-form) non-parametric regression using household
characteristics as explanatory variables. They find that they are determined by
different models, although some variables are significant in both regressions. Both are
determined by variables such as certain physical assets (including land per capita and
wealth) and household characteristics, including literacy of the head and household
size.

Glewwe and Hall (1998) considered vulnerable households as those experiencing

large declines in consumption following economic shocks during the adjustment
between 1985 and 1990 in Peru. In this period, GNP per capita fell by 30 percent They
find that households with poorly educated heads and with more children are more
affected by the shock. Contrary to what is usually stated, they found that female-
headed households were not more vulnerable than male headed households.

Both approaches give information on the characteristics of the vulnerable. They do not
give information on why they may fail to keep consumption smooth when shocks hit
them. Nor give they direct information on how others manage to avoid consumption
declines22. Still, the data requirements for this analysis are high – panel data on
welfare outcomes – to obtain some understanding of the type of households at risk or
chronically poor. However, once the analysis is done, identification could be done on
the basis of relatively easily observable characteristics (e.g. certain assets and
household characteristics).

• If policies are exogenous to the risk management and coping strategies, then
information on how households handle income risk is irrelevant. However,
policies may affect household opportunities to cope with risk (e.g. by changing
exit options from informal insurance). In that case, how households cope with risk
is relevant for the design of policies, in turn increasing data requirements.

In most applied poverty policy analysis, most attention goes towards identifying the
poor and then promoting targeted interventions, such as safety nets via public

22
Glewwe and Hall (1998) do some analysis on this. They find that those receiving transfers from
abroad (and contrary to those relying on transfers from within the country) managed to avoid
consumption declines.

27
employment schemes. Self-targeting mechanisms are then considered a way of
reaching the poor in a cost-effective way. However, once we are acknowledging that
the poor may well engage in alternative coping mechanisms, then more care will be
needed in designing policies.

In general, policies such as providing safety nets and or changes to economic policy
will affect household opportunity sets. A new safety net may well affect household
actions, such as reducing self-insurance (see above) as well as increasing overall risk
in the income activities portfolio. However, while the ‘traditional’ activities may be
affected negatively, overall households have more livelihood security, so this can
hardly be looked upon as a welfare loss.

Of course, other economic policies may well have negative effects on risk
management strategies, for example through general equilibrium effects. One can
imagine trade liberalisation resulting in cheaper imports of clothes and utensils,
reducing demand for weaving and handicraft, both relatively low entry cost activities,
used to reduce income risk.

For our purposes, the negative externalities of otherwise ‘positive’ policies are very
important. As was discussed before, a safety net may provide more protection for an
individual, but if this person is linked via informal insurance with other persons not
benefiting from the safety net, then a problem may arise. The informal agreement
may become unsustainable, leaving some individuals worse off, despite the safety net.

A targeted safety net may cause these problems. Optimal policy design would then
require not just information on those currently most at risk, but also use insights on
the informal links and insurance between the targeted group and other possibly
vulnerable groups dependent on informal arrangements. In general, if policies cannot
be assumed to be exogenous to household behaviour and networks, then more detailed
analysis on the shocks experienced by households and the way households cope with
income risk would be needed to inform policy. At present, very little analysis is
available.

• If effective safety nets and other consumption risk-reducing policies require

detailed knowledge of existing risk-reducing actions by households, then surveys
need information on physical, human and social capital, on shocks, as well as on
opportunities in labour, product and asset markets. Panel and cross-section
surveys could be used to collect relevant information.

The analysis of the success and failings of existing risk-reducing strategies by

household is highly data-intensive. Most analysis published in the economics
literature on risk and its consequences in developing countries is based on a handful of
data sets, with most stylised facts entering into textbook development economics
based on the three villages in South India, covered by ICRISAT. It is not realistic to
expect this detail for a large number of countries in the developing world.

While more work is no doubt needed on detailed panel data sets, household surveys,
including cross-sections, could be used to derive some measures and insights to
establish vulnerability and the strategies used by households. In particular, most

28
studies find that vulnerability to shocks is closely linked to assets in the form of
human capital and physical capital. In many ways, these are similar factors as typically
highlighted as determining long-term poverty23. Households with limited land
holdings, with few assets that can be liquidated and with limited education, typically
are most affected by the consequences of income risk. This is reflected in a lower
mean level of consumption (due to consumption risk averting actions, such as income
skewing) or higher consumption fluctuations. Most cross-section household surveys
contain information on physical and human capital, although in recent years, some of
the instruments promoted for monitoring welfare changes appear to have been cutting
back on these measures24. Information on human and physical capital may be
contributing to insights on access to income-based strategies and self-insurance (or
access to credit markets).

Information on physical and human capital may not be enough. In the discussion in
section 3, it was argued that households may face constraints to enter into profitable
diversification. Existing research suggests that physical and human capital are crucial
determinants for entry into these activities. However, at the same time opportunities
must exist to exploit these activities. Well-functioning markets, helped by
infrastructure, roads and a demand for these products are just as important; general
economic policies matter as well. It may well be possible that physical capital or skills
are available, for example to enter into handicrafts or trade, as part of a coping
strategy, but some areas may just be too remote to enter into them profitably. In short,
information on opportunities available is just as important25.

Note that entry constraints and incentives to skew income towards low-risk activities
imply that indexes measuring the degree of diversification (e.g. the number of
activities, the share of off-farm income, etc.) are unlikely to be a good measure of
vulnerability. As was argued before, diversification is a useful strategy, but it may
well be that a diversified portfolio is held for other reasons than risk-reduction. There
is also no reason why a household specialised in a low risk activity faces higher risk
than a household having a diversified portfolio of two very risky, correlated activities.
Furthermore, it is important to look at the income portfolio in conjunction with the
other risk-coping strategies: assets for self-insurance and informal insurance. Indeed,
one important lesson from the literature surveyed is that the degree of diversification
will be endogenous to the other strategies used, including self-insurance, irrespective
of constraints on diversification.

Physical asset information is bound to be very useful to describe vulnerability. Studies

that find the lack of consumption smoothing over time usually conclude that
households with relatively low asset holdings are more at risk. The total value of

23
Note however, the remark from Jalan and Ravallion (1996) that the model determining the link
between assets and transient versus chronic poverty appears different.
24
For example, in some countries, the SDA Priority Surveys and the Quick surveys appear to have less
and less asset information in the data, with an increased focus on monitoring consumption only.
25
A good example are the ‘traditional’ coping mechanisms with a localised drought in Ethiopia. During
the drought in Northern Ethiopia in 1984-85, households could not fall back on one of their typical
strategies, temporary migration to look for work, because there was a ban on casual wage labour
imposed by the government, while the war effort made anyone travelling suspect. The consequences are
well-known.

29
assets alone may not provide sufficient information on the ability to self-insurance.
Important questions also relate to the liquidity of assets – can they be sold if needed?
Note that many assets held in developing countries are liquid: crop inventories, cash,
but also livestock, jewellery, etc, even though the latter examples may have a cost in
lumpiness. As the discussion in section 2 showed, information on the functioning of
asset markets is necessary to determine the usefulness of the assets.

In short, data on physical and human capital, combined with information on the
functioning of and opportunities in product, labour and asset markets could provide a
good basis to identify vulnerable households. Standard household surveys, including
cross-section surveys, may contain a substantial part of the relevant information at the
household level.

Note that consumption poverty measured in a cross-section is likely to be correlated

with these asset holdings. But as was argued above is unlikely to identify the
vulnerable households correctly. Once vulnerability to consumption shortfalls is the
focal point, broader asset-based concepts of poverty data are needed to evaluate
policies and progress. Static poverty assessments and, in general, the discussion of
dynamic welfare change based on two or more static measures of poverty, derived
from cross-sections, are bound to give only a limited insight in the actual patterns of
change.

Data collection on household involvement in informal insurance systems is also

necessary to describe household vulnerability. The lack of such information is an
important shortcoming of most standard household surveys. Nevertheless,
understanding vulnerability and designing interventions to address these problems
require information on the networks households can fall back onto. It is possible to
include in household surveys questions about the association of the household with
others, and whether any insurance element is included. Observed transfers and other
linkages may be one option; direct questioning on opportunities available to ask for
help in times of crisis is another. A simple enumeration of the presence of networks
may be useful, but care has to be taken to interpret any linkage or network as a proof
for the existence of informal insurance mechanisms. Insurance and support networks
definitely form part of social capital, but all social capital cannot simply be reduced to
have insurance purposes.

Finally, a full description of the opportunities available to households to cope with

shocks requires also information on the available formal safety nets. Any formal
safety nets, for example as part of a social security policy, is relevant and needs to be
taken into account for monitoring vulnerability or designing policy initiatives. The
existence of public employment schemes and the way they function need to be taken
into account.

The study of different forms of capital and the opportunities available to use them to
reduce consumption risk can be enhanced by relatively simple, but revealing evidence
on the experience of households during shocks, whether idiosyncratic or common. In
particular, it is useful to ask households shocks they have experienced in recent years
and how they handled these crises. This would include questions on whether they have
adjusted their income generating activities, how they have used their assets and

30
whether they could rely on other people to support them during the crisis. Similarly,
one could investigate how households would respond if particular shocks hit them
now. While qualitative in nature, these direct questions, combined with information
on assets could provide rich information on existing strategies to cope with risk and
could inform appropriate policy design. Townsend (1996) reports on the results of a
relatively simple questionnaire in used in some villages in Thailand. The focus of the
questionnaire was on the difference between good and bad years and on whether or
how households might have managed to smooth consumption26.

• The complexity of consumption-risk reducing strategies implies that a simple

indicator is unlikely to be available. Measures of vulnerability would typically
require detailed data, including from panels. Some indicators that aim to describe
vulnerability are typically flawed.

Cross-section surveys could provide useful information on relevant questions related

to the understanding household vulnerability and its scale. These questions include:
Do households have assets to sell? Do they have assets to reallocate? Do they have
labour to reallocate? What opportunities for reallocation labour and assets exist? Can
they fall back on anyone?27 If panel data are available for some years, it would be
possible to derive aggregate measures of ‘population at risk’, in the way discussed
before. Cross-section data alone are not sufficient for such measures.

Some international agencies have developed measures that aim to describe

‘population at risk’ using food security information. For example, the FAO uses a
‘Aggregate Household Food Security Index’, based on per capita dietary energy
supply (DES) from food balance sheets (and its deviation to long-term average), per
capita GNP in PPP and the coefficient of variation of the income distribution. For
reliable statements, the data requirements are very high and clearly not met in this
case. An estimate of ‘population at risk’ is derived by assuming a time-invariant log-
normal distribution around mean DES. Information gaps and the total lack of
information on household behaviour and constraints make it quite unreliable for any
policy purpose. Similarly, USAID has a ‘Food Security Index’ combining five
indicators: food production per capita, foreign exchange earnings (as a measure of
import capacity), GNP per capita, child mortality (as a proxy for income distribution)
and daily calorie supply (as a proxy for food prices). One purpose is to rank countries
using this index. But again, problems with the data and the lack of information on

26
He finds that some rich households in one village try to smooth using buffer stocks, and some
relatively poor households increased labour supply. Another group borrow and lend from each other
and have developed village institutions, such as a rice bank, a housewife fund and a health insurance
fund. He also finds that in a relatively rich village integrated in the cash economy, these village level
institutions do not function and severe illness appears to result in serious shocks to consumption,
suggesting the type of disincentive effects for sustainable informal arrangements when outside options
change, as were discussed before.
27
The emphasis in this paper has been on the household as the main unit engaging in strategies to
reduce consumption risk. The analysis does not need to stop here: if resources are allocated as part of
bargaining between members of the household, individual strategies could also described and
discussed. Similarly, in data collection, one could collect data on individual strategies, access to capital
and opportunities. Detailed analysis of this goes beyond the scope of this paper. Few empirical studies
have successfully addressed these issues as well.

31
household opportunities limit its use (see Devereux (1998) for a discussion of these
and other food security monitoring activities).

• The emphasis on the ability to cope with risk via assets, human capital and
informal insurance and on the opportunities available, marks a convergence of
different disciplines, bridging gaps with more qualitative approaches.

The increasing emphasis on monitoring different forms of capital (human, physical

and social) and the opportunities to use these capital goods when needed clearly draws
inspiration from Sen’s ‘entitlements’ approach to the analysis of famine. Although we
emphasise that household surveys can derive much of the relevant information to
monitor and understand vulnerability to risk, similar approaches can be found in
social-sciences literature using qualitative approaches. An example is Moser’s ‘Asset
Vulnerability Framework’ in which households’ access to different types of assets
determines vulnerability (Moser (1998) and the reference therein). Similarly to the
approach taken in this paper, households are considered managers of complex
portfolios of assets and interventions should be aimed to promote better opportunities
to use these assets. This approach relies on more qualitative data collection
techniques, such participatory assessment.

Some may be tempted to suggest that quantitative surveys should not be used to study
vulnerability and risk-coping strategies, and leave qualitative studies fill the gap (as
appears to be case at present in welfare monitoring activities). We do not take this
position. Integrating qualitative data collection into quantitative household surveys is
bound to yield less contradictory evidence than presently seems to be found by the
different approaches, for example on the effects on vulnerability and poverty from
economic policies. National household surveys are likely to be required to obtain
information on the scale of vulnerability and its regional spread and diversity, and to
inform decisions about policies and priorities. The local nature of qualitative studies is
bound to add more detailed understanding of vulnerability, but the results are difficult
to aggregate and compare across areas.

6. Conclusions

Households in developing countries continue to face considerable risk, threatening

their livelihood. In this paper, we have discussed the different strategies households
use to cope with this risk. We have focused on income-based strategies, on assets as
self-insurance and on informal insurance arrangements. Households are constrained in
using these strategies. Income-based strategies are limited because of entry-constraints
into profitable activities, leaving the poor to concentrate on low return, low risk
activities. Self-insurance is limited by access to assets and poor functioning of asset
markets when a crisis hits the household. Informal insurance arrangements are
affected by sustainability constraints, often excluding the poor from these
arrangements; furthermore, economy-wide shocks cannot be handled by these
arrangements.

Economic policies could contribute to better protection against risk. Improved

working of asset markets and macroeconomic stability would contribute to the

32
usefulness of self-insurance. Increased access to alternative economic activities and
increased opportunities could allow income-based strategies to be strengthened.
Public safety nets might be thought to provide a useful alternative; however they are
likely to result in some crowding out and even a decline in average welfare, since
incentive effects could affect the sustainability of informal insurance arrangements.
Initiatives to develop safety nets should take into account existing risk-coping
strategies. Issues of the net welfare effects and crowding-out are relevant.
Strengthening self-insurance may remain an insufficiently explored alternative, such
as via group-based savings More empirical research, however, if necessary to assess
the functioning of informal risk-sharing arrangements and the consequences of
interventions thereof.

Obtaining estimates on the vulnerable population rather than the currently poor is very
data intensive, requiring panel data. Measures of transient and chronic poverty could
provide useful descriptions for policy analysis. Cross-section surveys could also
provide useful insights. In particular, they could provide information on the
underlying determinants of the risk-reducing strategies, in the form of physical, human
and social capital. They also could inform about the opportunities available to
households, currently and during past crises. Qualitative studies could provide useful
insights but incorporating some of these concerns in large quantitative household
surveys is likely to yield important pay-offs in terms of better understanding of
changes in welfare and vulnerability, and in terms of optimal policy design.

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