Income and its variability in a drought-prone region: seasonality, location and household characteristics

Susanne van Dillen

The European Journal of Development Research, 2008, vol. 20, issue 4, 579-596

Abstract: This paper investigates three questions in a poor and drought-prone region of western Orissa, India. Is aggregate income stable? How do a household's characteristics and its local environment influence both the level of its income and its variability? Does a short-lived, common shock cause significant income variability? The study is based on an original, three-season panel data set of 240 households, in which one monsoon season was marked by a severe drought. Aggregate income varied little, but there were considerable fluctuations in individual household incomes across seasons, the main sources of which were idiosyncratic shocks. This suggests that although current programmes are effective in stabilizing aggregate income against drought, massive additional intervention along the same lines is not an efficient way to combat a drought's effects. Rather, it is desirable to promote suitable insurance arrangements to deal with idiosyncratic shocks, measures which would complement those designed to raise incomes permanently.

Keywords: poverty; natural hazards; income variability; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article& ... 40C6AD35DC6213A474B5 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:eurjdr:v:20:y:2008:i:4:p:579-596

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/FEDR20

DOI: 10.1080/09578810802464912

Access Statistics for this article

The European Journal of Development Research is currently edited by Rajneesh Narula

More articles in The European Journal of Development Research from Taylor and Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().