UNU-WIDER Insurance Against Poverty

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Insurance Against Poverty

Project name/title

Insurance Against Poverty

Year:

2000

Theme:

Poverty, Inequality and Well-being

Abstract:

Households in developing countries face many risks. Informal insurance mechanisms (marriage, the extended family, and investment in social capital) provide some protection but are weak in the face of major calamities that affect households en masse (for example drought or economic recession). Most people cannot obtain formal insurance. The incomplete insurance market therefore constrains investment, growth, and poverty reduction. Public action to remedy this deficiency is merited, but what form should it take? The project will evaluate alternatives in widening insurance provision, including sustainability and poverty effects.

Director:

• Stefan Dercon
  Research fellow/Project director 

Assistant:

• Anne Ruohonen 
  Project Assistant 

Project Meetings

• 15 June 2001 Project meeting on Insurance against poverty: 15-16 June 2001

Publications:

• Can Financial Markets be Tapped to Help Poor People Cope with Weather Risks?
• Can Food-for-Work Programmes Reduce Vulnerability?
• Consumption Smoothing Across Space: Testing Theories of Risk-Sharing in the ICRISAT Study Region of South India
• Culture and the Fertility Transition in India
• Do Public Transfers Crowd Out Private Transfers? Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in Mexico
• Food Aid and Informal Insurance
• The Gradual Erosion of the Social Security Function of Customary Land Tenure Arrangements in Lineage-Based Societies
• Health, Shocks and Poverty Persistence
• Household Income Dynamics in Rural China
• Income Risk, Coping Strategies and Safety Nets
• Incorporating Insurance Provisions in Microfinance Contracts: Learning from Visa®?
• Inequality and Risk
• Insurance Against Poverty
• Is a Friend in Need a Friend Indeed? Inclusion and Exclusion in Mutual Insurance Networks in Southern Ghana
• The Macroeconomic Repercussions of Agricultural Shocks and their Implications for Insurance
• Measuring Vulnerability to Poverty
• Measuring Vulnerability: The Director's Cut
• Risk Sharing and Public Transfers
• Risk-Sharing and Endogenous Network Formation
• Targeting and Informal Insurance
• Why isn't there more Financial Intermediation in Developing Countries?

Content: