TY - JOUR

T1 - An asset-based approach to vulnerability

T2 - The case of small-scale fishing areas in Cameroon and Nigeria

AU - Chiwaula, Levison S.

AU - Witt, Rudolf

AU - Waibel, Hermann

N1 - Funding Information: We thank the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) for the financial support of the project on ‘Food security and poverty alleviation through improved valuation and governance of river fisheries in Africa’, which was coordinated by the World Fish Centre. Comments by Christopher Barrett and Felix Naschold to an earlier version of this paper are also appreciated. The authors also thank two anonymous referees for their very thorough review of the paper and their extremely valuable comments. We also want to thank the editor for the excellent guidance of the review process and additional useful comments on the paper. The views expressed in this paper are not necessarily those of the donor agency nor of our project partner, the World Fish Centre. All the remaining errors are ours.

PY - 2011/2

Y1 - 2011/2

N2 - This paper analyses vulnerability to poverty of rural small-scale fishing communities using cross-section data from 295 households in Cameroon and 267 in Nigeria. We propose a vulnerability measure that incorporates the idea of asset poverty into the concept of expected poverty, which allows decomposing expected poverty into expected structural-chronic, structural-transient, and stochastic-transient poverty. The findings show that most households in our study areas are expected to be structurally-chronic and structurally-transient poor. This underlines the importance of asset formation for long-term poverty reduction strategies. Further refinements are possible with longitudinal data and information about future states of nature.

AB - This paper analyses vulnerability to poverty of rural small-scale fishing communities using cross-section data from 295 households in Cameroon and 267 in Nigeria. We propose a vulnerability measure that incorporates the idea of asset poverty into the concept of expected poverty, which allows decomposing expected poverty into expected structural-chronic, structural-transient, and stochastic-transient poverty. The findings show that most households in our study areas are expected to be structurally-chronic and structurally-transient poor. This underlines the importance of asset formation for long-term poverty reduction strategies. Further refinements are possible with longitudinal data and information about future states of nature.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=79251631797&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1080/00220381003599410

DO - 10.1080/00220381003599410

M3 - Article

C2 - 21506304

AN - SCOPUS:79251631797

VL - 47

SP - 338

EP - 353

JO - Journal of Development Studies

JF - Journal of Development Studies

SN - 0022-0388

IS - 2

ER -