Vulnerability and household dynamics: Conceptual and empirical issues for Thailand and Vietnam

传统的贫困评估只能呈现一幅静态的贫困图景，往往忽略了局势的动态方面。因此，对经济发展的研究正在迅速超越静态的贫困衡量标准，纳入风险、冲击和脆弱性等方面。这一努力导致了侧重于脆弱性不同方面的许多定义和衡量，这些定义和衡量已在各种经验环境中得到应用。很大程度上缺少的是对现有定义和方法的全面比较分析，这些定义和方法将使制定概念上合理和经验相关的措施成为可能。该项目的主要目标是努力制定合理的、经验性强的脆弱性衡量标准，同时考虑到家庭结构的内生性以及家庭内部的动态。首先，这项工作将为设计一项专门的家庭调查提供投入，使其能够比现有调查更好地分析脆弱性。在这里，改变家庭结构和家庭内部动态对易受贫穷影响的作用将是经验性工作的具体重点。此外，该项目的成果将成为研究单位内其他项目工作的重要基础，这些项目侧重于具体方面和国家。

Traditional poverty assessments, which can only present a static picture of poverty, often miss dynamic aspects of the situation. Research in economic development is, therefore, rapidly moving beyond static poverty measures to include aspects of risks, shocks, and vulnerability. This effort has lead to numerous definitions and measurements focusing on different dimensions of vulnerability, which have been applied in various empirical settings. What is largely missing is a comprehensive comparative analysis of the existing definitions and methods that would allow the development of conceptually sound and empirically relevant measures. The major objective of this project is to work towards the development of sound and empirically tractable measures of vulnerability that also take into account the endogeneity of household structures as well as intra-household dynamics. This work will, first of all, provide an input to design a specialized household survey that allows for a better analysis of vulnerability than that from currently available surveys. Here, the role of changing household structure and intra-household dynamics on vulnerability to poverty will be a specific focus of the empirical work. Furthermore, the output of this project will form an important basis for the work of other projects within the research unit, which focus on specific aspects and countries.