Event: Department Seminar

Location: Virtual on Zoom

Contact Person: Gil DePaula

Title: Weathering Poverty

Abstract: The overlapping incidence of poverty and climate damages globally raises the question of how far poverty makes people more vulnerable to worsening weather shocks. To study this question, we overlay high-resolution, satellite-based drought and flood measures on household survey panel data from the randomized evaluation of a flagship anti-poverty graduation program in Bangladesh. The comparison of households that were equally poor before a randomly chosen group of them were given the graduation program reveals that poverty strongly exacerbates the negative consumption impacts of unpredictable weather shocks. The program significantly increases recipients' resilience to such shocks. Those lifted out of poverty are able to maintain and diversify productive assets and labor activities and do not draw down transferred assets. Big-push poverty reduction programs are a promising means of protecting those living in extreme poverty today and helping to prevent climate shocks from adding to their ranks.