Are Fishers Poor or Vulnerable? Assessing Economic Vulnerability in Small-Scale Fishing Communities

Abstract An index of economic vulnerability is developed and used with a more conventional measure of income poverty to explore vulnerability and chronic poverty in isolated rural communities. The method is applied to data from remote rural fishing–farming communities in Congo. The analysis highlights the high vulnerability of full-time fisherfolk and identifies mobility as a key factor increasing vulnerability. In line with other recent economic research, our work also shows that households can remain highly vulnerable even when their incomes lie well above the average local income. These different results are consistent with the more specialised literature on small-scale fisheries, confirming the robustness of the analysis proposed in this paper.

[1]  G. Duncan,et al.  Poverty dynamics in eight countries , 1993 .

[2]  Stefan Dercon,et al.  Income portfolios in rural Ethiopia and Tanzania: choices and constraints , 1996 .

[3]  Pierre Morand,et al.  Fishing Livelihoods: Successful Diversification, or Sinking into Poverty? , 2005 .

[4]  Michael P. Carter,et al.  Environment, Technology, and the Social Articulation of Risk in West African Agriculture , 1997, Economic Development and Cultural Change.

[5]  D. Hulme,et al.  Chronic Poverty and Remote Rural Areas, CPRC Working Paper No. 13 , 2002 .

[6]  John Hoddinott,et al.  Methods for Microeconometric Risk and Vulnerability Assessments , 2008 .

[7]  Stephen Devereux,et al.  Can Social Safety Nets Reduce Chronic Poverty , 2002 .

[8]  R. Kanbur,et al.  The dynamics of welfare gains and losses: An African case study , 1997 .

[9]  Neil McCulloch,et al.  Vulnerability and Chronic Poverty in Rural Sichuan , 2003 .

[10]  T. Walker,et al.  Village and household economics in India's semi-arid tropics , 1990 .

[11]  John G. McPeak,et al.  Poverty Traps and Safety Nets , 2006 .

[12]  A. Khan.  Poverty in China in the period of globalization: new evidence on trend and pattern , 1998 .

[13]  Bob Baulch,et al.  Economic mobility and poverty dynamics in developing countries , 2000 .

[14]  B. McCarl,et al.  Risk, uncertainty and agricultural development , 1980 .

[15]  Martin Ravallion,et al.  Determinants of Transient and Chronic Poverty: Evidence from Rural China , 1998 .

[16]  Martin Ravallion,et al.  Is transient poverty different? Evidence for rural China , 2000 .

[17]  David Hulme,et al.  Chronic Poverty and Remote Rural Areas , 2002 .

[18]  Ian R. Smith,et al.  A research framework for traditional fisheries , 1979 .

[19]  R. Chambers.  Editorial Introduction: Vulnerability, Coping and Policy , 1989 .

[20]  D. Hulme.  Chronic Poverty and Development Policy: An Introduction , 2003 .

[21]  M. Prowse.  Towards a Clearer Understanding of 'Vulnerability' in Relation to Chronic Poverty , 2003 .

[22]  Luc Christiaensen,et al.  On Measuring Household Food Vulnerability: Case Evidence from Northern Mali , 2000 .

[23]  A. Neiland,et al.  Inland fisheries, tenure systems and livelihood diversification in Africa: The case of the Yae´re´ floodplains in Lake Chad Basin , 2003 .

[24]  A. Balisacan,et al.  Poverty and vulnerability. , 2007 .

[25]  L. Pritchett,et al.  Quantifying Vulnerability to Poverty: A Proposed Measure, Applied to Indonesia , 2000 .

[26]  Thomas E. Downing,et al.  Vulnerability to hunger in Africa , 1991 .

[27]  A. Shepherd,et al.  Livelihoods and Chronic Poverty in Semi-Arid Zimbabwe , 2003 .

[28]  John Hoddinott,et al.  Health, shocks and poverty persistence , 2003 .

[29]  D. Hogan,et al.  Towards an interdisciplinary conceptualisation of vulnerability , 2005 .

[30]  T. Reardon,et al.  Determinants and effects of income diversification amongst farm households in Burkina Faso , 1991 .

[31]  R. Ruben.  Smallholder farming in less-favoured areas: Options for pro-poor and sustainable livelihoods , 2005 .

[32]  J. Swift,et al.  Why are Rural People Vulnerable to Famine , 1989 .

[33]  Christopher B. Barrett,et al.  Rural poverty dynamics: development policy implications , 2003 .

[34]  M. Rosenzweig.  Wealth, weather risk, and the composition and profitability of agricultural investments , 1989 .

[35]  D. Hulme,et al.  Chronic Poverty: Meanings and Analytical Frameworks , 2001 .

[36]  Robert Chambers,et al.  Crying Out for Change: Voices of the Poor , 2000 .

[37]  L. Christiaensen,et al.  Toward an Understanding of Household Vulnerability in Rural Kenya , 2004 .

[38]  Caroline Moser,et al.  The Asset Vulnerability Framework: Reassessing Urban Poverty Reduction Strategies''World Development , 1998 .

[39]  Stefan Dercon,et al.  Wealth, risk and activity choice: cattle in Western Tanzania , 1998 .

[40]  M. Lipton,et al.  Poverty in Emerging Asia: Progress, Setbacks, and Log-jams , 1998, Asian Development Review.

[41]  T. Walker,et al.  Village and household economies in India''s semi-arid tropics. Baltimore, Md. U. S. A. : Johns , 1990 .

[42]  M. Prowse.  Towards a clearer understanding of 'vulnerability' inrelation to chronic poverty, CPRC Working Paper No. 24 , 2003 .

[43]  C. Béné,et al.  Inland Fisheries, Poverty, and Rural Livelihoods in the Lake Chad Basin , 2003 .

[44]  Frederick J. Zimmerman,et al.  Asset smoothing, consumption smoothing and the reproduction of inequality under risk and subsistence constraints , 2003 .

[45]  E. Allison,et al.  Putting the principles of the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach into fisheries development policy and practice , 2006 .

[46]  F. Ellis.  Rural Livelihoods and Diversity in Developing Countries , 2000 .

[47]  M. Alamgir,et al.  The state of world rural poverty: an inquiry into its causes and consequences , 1992 .

[48]  G. R. Conway,et al.  An Introduction to Rapid Rural Appraisal for Agricultural Development , 1988 .

[49]  C. Barrett,et al.  Asset, Activity, and Income Diversification Among African Agriculturalists: Some Practical Issues , 2000 .

[50]  I. Smith.  Improving fishing incomes when resources are overfished , 1981 .

[51]  F. Ellis,et al.  The fisheries sector, livelihoods and poverty reduction in eastern and southern Africa. , 2005 .

[52]  J. Gunning,et al.  Coping with drought in Zimbabwe: Survey evidence on responses of rural households to risk , 1998 .

[53]  C. Barrett,et al.  The economics of poverty traps and persistent poverty: An asset-based approach , 2006 .

[54]  C. Béné.  When Fishery Rhymes with Poverty: A First Step Beyond the Old Paradigm on Poverty in Small-Scale Fisheries , 2003 .

[55]  F. Ellis.  Household strategies and rural livelihood diversification , 1998 .

[56]  M. Alamgir,et al.  The State of World Rural Poverty , 1992 .

[57]  R. Chambers,et al.  Voices of the Poor: Crying Out for Change , 2000 .