Vulnerability‘Vulnerable’ and ‘vulnerability’ are common terms inthe lexicon of development, but their use is oftenvague. They serve as convenient substitutes for ‘poor’and ‘poverty’, and allow planners and otherprofessionals to restrain the overuse of those words.Some precision can be found in the use of‘vulnerable groups’ where this refers to pregnant andlactating women, to children, or to disadvantagedcommunities such as scheduled castes and scheduledtribes in India. More often, though, vulnerable is usedsimply as a synonym for poor.

Vulnerability, though, is not the same as poverty. Itmeans not lack or want, but defencelessness, insecurity,and exposure to risk, shocks and stress. This contrast isclearer when different dimensions of deprivation aredistinguished, for example physical weakness, isolation,poverty and powerlessness as well as vulnerability. Ofthese, physical weakness, isolation and poverty arequite well recognised, and many programmes seek toalleviate them; powerlessness is crucial but it is rare fordirect action against it to be politically acceptable; andvulnerability has remained curiously neglected inanalysis and policy, perhaps because of its confusionwith poverty. Yet vulnerability, and its opposite, security,stand out as recurrent concerns of poor people whichprofessional definitions of poverty overlook.

Vulnerability here refers to exposure to contingenciesand stress, and difficulty in coping with them.Vulnerability has thus two sides: an external side ofrisks, shocks, and stress to which an individual orhousehold is subject; and an internal side which isdefencelessness, meaning a lack of means to copewithout damaging loss. Loss can take many forms –becoming or being physically weaker, economicallyimpoverished, socially dependent, humiliated orpsychologically harmed.

Failure to distinguish vulnerability from poverty hasbad effects. It blurs distinctions and sustainsstereotypes of the amorphous and undifferentiatedmass of the poor. Poverty is often defined byprofessionals for convenience of counting, in termsof flows of income or consumption. Anti-povertyprogrammes are then designed to raise incomes orconsumption and progress is assessed by measures ofthese flows. Indicators of poverty are then easilytaken as indicators of other dimensions ofdeprivation, including vulnerability. But vulnerability,more than poverty, is linked with net assets. Poverty,in the sense of low income, can be reduced byborrowing and investing; but such debt makeshouseholds more vulnerable. Poor people, in theirhorror of debt, appear more aware thanprofessionals of the trade-offs between poverty andvulnerability. Programmes and policies to reducevulnerability – to make more secure – are not, onefor one, the same as programmes and policies toreduce poverty – to raise incomes.

Care is also needed because vulnerability and securitystart as ‘our’ concepts and are not necessarily ‘theirs’.To correct and modify them to fit local conditionsrequires decentralised analysis, encouraging,permitting, and acting on local concepts andpriorities, as defined by poor people themselves. Todate, such analysis indicates that for them, reducingvulnerability and enhancing security are recurrentconcerns. Moreover, in recent years, while conditionshave improved for some people, hundreds of millionsof others have become more vulnerable; throughgreater exposure to physical or political disaster orthreat, through higher costs of meetingcontingencies such as health expenditures, or throughloss of assets through individual or widespreaddisasters which have used up their reserves, leavingthem less able to cope with future needs and crises.

Vulnerability, Coping and Policy(Editorial Introduction)

Robert Chambers*

*This article was first published in the IDS Bulletin Volume 20 Number 2 (1989) ‘Vulnerability: How the Poor Cope' edited by Robert Chambers. © Institute of Development Studies 1989

IDS Bulletin Volume 37 Number 4, September 2006. Anthology © 2006 Institute of Development Studies 33

4Chambers37.4.qxd 31/08/2006 18:02 Page 33

With concerns like these a workshop on vulnerabilityand coping was held at the Institute of DevelopmentStudies (IDS) in September 1988, leading to this IDSBulletin. Some 20 people took part, about half ofthem reporting on recent fieldwork. The focus wasat the household level, and the aims were to try tounderstand better the nature of vulnerability, howpoor people cope with risks, shocks and stress, andwhat should be priorities for policy and research.

Unlike poverty, vulnerability lacks a developed theoryand accepted indicators and methods ofmeasurement. The articles in this IDS Bulletin provideideas and material which should contribute towardsdeveloping these. Most directly, the first article, byJeremy Swift (page 41), presents a critique of partsof Amartya Sen’s entitlement theory, and thenoutlines a new analysis of vulnerability and securitybased on a classification of assets into investments,stores and claims. Investments can be personal – ineducation, training and capabilities, or physical – inthings, such as housing, land shaping and the like;stores can be of food, or real value, or of cashsavings; and claims can be on other individuals or onhouseholds, patrons, the government, or theinternational community. In this perspective,households have portfolios of investments, storesand claims which change over seasons and longerperiods, and have strategies for using them to dealwith different stresses, shocks and demands.

The next three articles, by Housainou Taal, Tony Beckand Judith Heyer, illustrate the diversity of actionsand strategies of those who are vulnerable and poor.Taal, reporting on two villages in the Gambia, showshow the compounded risks and stress of low anduncertain rainfall, price fluctuations, variable access tomarkets, and adverse seasonal conditions, are met bya repertoire of cropping patterns, crop storage,reduced consumption, off-farm work, asset disposaland exploiting community and kinship ties. Beck,presenting findings from fieldwork in rural WestBengal, highlights four types of activity which areimportant for the poorest, but little studied andoften overlooked. These are the use of commonproperty resources, which includes gleaning,collection of fuel, and gathering wild foods; changingthe patterns of eating and food preparation; share-rearing of livestock; and mutual support networks.Heyer describes the behaviours of landless labourersin a village in a South Indian district, finding thatalthough all were constrained in their options for

investment, and none bought land, the assetstrategies of two social groups of the landless werestrikingly different.

The following three articles are concerned with howvulnerability is linked with deprivation, ill-health, andmalnutrition. These are examined at the householdlevel and also within the household. From hisfieldwork on river blindness in Guinea (Conakry), TimEvans describes the effects on households over timeof the onset of adult disability through progressiveloss of sight, leading to extreme stress and privationand to death and dispersal of other householdmembers. From her study of very poor households inan urban slum in Bangladesh, Jane Pryer finds astrong association of severe child malnutrition withthe ill-health and inability to work of breadwinningadults. Jane Corbett then examines vulnerability tosickness, and the high economic costs to householdsof ill-health, including how sickness make poorpeople poorer through delayed treatment, the costsof treatment, and loss of earnings.

The last two articles assess programmes ofintervention. Alex de Waal bases a critique of faminefood relief on his 18 months of fieldwork in Darfur,Sudan (1985–7), concluding that in that context foodrelief did limit impoverishment, but that it was notsignificant in directly saving lives – the immediatecause of excess mortality being sickness. Finally,David Nabarro, Claudia Cassels and Mahesh Pantdescribe the impact on households of an integratedrural development project in Nepal implementedover a five-year period, and argue for support to thecomplex and well-developed strategies of thepoorest in coping with crises and with the annualfood gap, stressing access to health, veterinary andcredit services, and to off-farm work and markets.

PerspectivesThese articles are distinguished from much writingon deprivation by being based on direct, personalfield research, and the insights derived from patientand sensitive learning from those who are vulnerableand poor. The findings often do not fit normalpreconceptions. They qualify and complicate our viewof vulnerability and coping. They challengestereotypes of the poor and of programmes to helpthem. Readers will identify their own perspectivesamong those presented. I shall pick out five whichstrike me as important, and which have implicationsfor policy and research.

Chambers Vulnerability, Coping and Policy34

4Chambers37.4.qxd 31/08/2006 18:02 Page 34

Poor people’s prioritiesThe concepts of poverty which most influence policyare those of the rich, who assume that they knowwhat poor people want and need. By emphasisingincome and consumption, they neglect otheraspects. Nor should vulnerability and security begiven more attention than they deserve, case bycase. Poor people have many criteria of well-beingand deprivation. It is the outsiders who simplify themdown to one or two, or a few. In his re-survey after20 years of two villages in Gujarat, N.S. Jodha(forthcoming) found that the households whose realper caput incomes had declined by more than 5 percent were, on average, better off on 37 of their own38 criteria of well-being. Besides income andconsumption, they were concerned withindependence, mobility, security and self-respect.

The view is common that the poorest ‘live hand-to-mouth’. This simplifies and distorts. Besides food theyhave other priorities. Although their wants and needsare usually complex, some of what they express aspriorities can be captured by the three words survival,security and self-respect. Significantly, Beck found, asdid Jodha earlier, how much self-respect can matterto the poorest. Most of Beck’s respondents said thatloss of respect was worse than hunger.

Similarly, very poor people can show extremetenacity in taking a long view and struggling throughsacrifice to maintain the basis of their livelihood. DeWaal found a woman in Darfur, on leaving her villagein the famine, preserving millet seed for planting bymixing it with sand to prevent her hungry childreneating it. The primary aim of famine victims in Darfurwas to preserve the basis of their future livelihood.Their strategies, as de Waal points out, were ‘anti-destitution’ rather than ‘survival’.

Strategies: complex and diverseIn the common stereotype, the lives of poor peopleare simple and uniform. The reality is often theopposite. The coping strategies of those who arepoor and deprived vary by region, community, socialgroup, household, gender, age, season and time inhistory. As the case studies illustrate, most poorpeople have strategies which are complex anddiverse. There are some who seek a single source ofsupport, like the chakkiliyans described by Heyer whofor a time accept being at the beck and call of onemaster. But most poor people do not choose to putall their eggs in one basket. Rather they reduce risk,

increase adaptability, and seek a degree of autonomy,by developing and maintaining wider options,through the ability and willingness of differenthousehold members to do different things indifferent places at different times.

The range of means which poor rural people use forsubsistence, to maintain their livelihoods, and to copewith contingencies, is impressive. Some are obviousand well known: cultivation, herding large and smallstock, labouring in agriculture, off-farm economicactivities, mortgaging and selling assets includingfuture labour, begging, theft, and the splitting,dispersal and migration of families. Others which areless visible, less well recognised and less studied, arementioned in this IDS Bulletin. They include eatingless and worse, deferring medical treatment andexpenditure, exploiting common property resources(such as the wild foods of West Bengal and Darfur),and share-rearing. In addition, Taal, Beck, Evans andPryer all mention mutual support. In the Bangladeshslum described by Pryer, some workers had a self-help sickness insurance, and mutual help wascommon among poor slum women but little talkedabout. Most of these activities are hard for outsidersto see, and easy to harm by policy interventionswhich are blind to them.

The investment strategies of the poor also vary. AsHeyer found, education can be an unproductiveinvestment for some, with high opportunity costsfrom children’s earnings foregone. Nor did thepoorest in her village buy land, partly because itwould entail loss of mobility. Although theireconomic status was similar, the chakkiliyans and thepanadis showed very different social and economicbehaviour. More generally, poor people try todiversify their portfolio of assets, defined in Swift’sinclusive sense to include investments, stores andclaims, so that they can handle contingencies andbad times better and minimise irreversible loss.

De Waal’s Darfur study also illustrates local diversity.The behaviour of rural people in Darfur during the1984–5 famine does not correspond with normaloutsiders’ expectations. They returned to theirvillages in order to cultivate, walking away from relieffood to re-establish the basis of their livelihoods. Thiscan be interpreted partly in terms of two localconditions: a relative abundance of wild foods; and alow level of past contact with government, includingno previous experience with relief food supplies.

IDS Bulletin Volume 37 Number 4 September 2006 35

4Chambers37.4.qxd 31/08/2006 18:02 Page 35

Famine behaviour in Northern Ethiopia is different:there, people are more inclined to move to roads indistress, having in the past been supported bygovernment in crises. Part of the diversity ofstrategies derives thus from people’s past experience,and in turn affects how best to intervene.

Changing degrees of vulnerabilityIn parts of the rural South, trends can be discernedwhich make poor people more vulnerable. To be sure,where their incomes rise, they have the means tomake investments, to build up stores, and to establishclaims which make them less insecure. Where servicesimprove, isolation and vulnerability diminish. Wheretenure of land, water and trees is clearly vested in thepoorer, they become more secure. But in somecountries and regions, especially in sub-Saharan Africa,declining real incomes imply increasing vulnerability,and in addition, there and elsewhere, four trends withnegative effects can be found.

The first is a decline in patron–client obligations.These are disliked more and more by clients whofind them demeaning, and sought less and less bypatrons, who prefer a cut-and-dried casual wagerelationship to more open-ended responsibilities todependent clients. Patterns here are not uniform;the South India case presented by Heyer is a partialexception where patrons paid relatively high wagesto those who accepted labour attachments.

The second trend is declining support from theextended family. Not just in urban areas, thetendency is towards smaller consumption units, asnoted by Taal in the Gambia, and towards thenuclear household. The weakening of wider familyobligations then leaves households more exposed.

The third trend is rising costs of contingencies.Weddings, brideprice and dowry have tended to rise,except for the very poor and destitute who simplycannot afford them. Perhaps more seriously, medicalexpenses have risen. Whereas in the past, onlyrelatively inexpensive indigenous medicine wasavailable, many poor people now have access tomore expensive allopathic treatment. A new form ofimpoverishing vulnerability is costly treatment forsickness which is not cured, as illustrated by the casehistory of Abdullah’s family described by Pryer.

The fourth trend is localised, but severe in areas ofrecurrent famine such as the Sahel, where

interventions to provide support for the vulnerabletend to come late. This is mortgage, sale or loss oftangible assets in order to obtain food, culminatingin loss of means of livelihood and destitution. Manymillions in sub-Saharan Africa, after the crisis of1984–5 are more vulnerable than before, becausethey have used up or lost most or all of their tangibleassets, and have so little opportunity to build themup again. In consequence, it now requires a lesssevere crisis to bring them to dependence on outsidesupport.

These trends to greater vulnerability are notuniversal. But where they occur, they pose problemsfor policy. The question is whether and how the stateand the international community should and can beopen to claims which were formerly met by patrons,kin and the disposal of tangible assets.

Assets, contingencies and livelihoodsContingencies impoverish in different ways.Households have different strategies and exploit orcash their assets in different combinations andsequences.

Following Swift’s separation of tangible andintangible assets into investments, stores and claims,the strategies of poor people can be seen as themanagement of a complex portfolio of assets, eachwith a different profile. The criteria of poor peoplethemselves deserve empirical investigation, but somecharacteristics of tangible assets that appearimportant can be noted: on the positive side,divisibility, ease of sale or mortgage, and good priceincluding avoiding a distress sale and maintainingvalue in bad times; and on the negative side, badeffects of disposal of assets can include loss ofproduction, diminished value of labour power, andloss of self-respect. The strategies and sequences ofcoping with crises vary by household and by localconditions, but Corbett’s (1988) comparative analysisof studies of four famines found that an early steptaken by poor households when they see bad timescoming is to change their diet and eat less, reflectingin part the priority they give to preserving thoseassets which provide their means of livelihood.

One view has been that while poor people haveassets such as livestock, they should not receivesupport since they can sell them and so remainindependent. In contrast, it can be argued that pastcrisis interventions have often come too late, after

Chambers Vulnerability, Coping and Policy36

4Chambers37.4.qxd 31/08/2006 18:02 Page 36

poor people have become poorer by disposing ofproductive assets, or after they have taken debts orobligations which prejudice their livelihoods, and thatfuture interventions should come earlier.

The care of adult bodiesThe main asset of most poor people is their bodies.General and measurable concepts like ‘labourpower’, ‘labour availability’ and ‘dependency ratio’blunt this sharp point, and miss the stark personalreality. The good ethical and humanitarian reasonsfor providing health services and reducing sufferingfrom sickness sometimes serve to divert attentionfrom the economic aspects of ill-health, analysed byCorbett. These include the plain facts that thepoorer people are, the more it matters to be able towork and earn, the more they depend on physicalwork, and the higher are the personal costs ofphysical disability.

At the same time, the bodies of the poorer aremore vulnerable than those of the less poor: they aremore exposed to sickness from insanitary, pollutedand disease-ridden environments both at work andat home, and to accidents in their work; they areweaker, with malnourishment and previous sicknesstending to reduce resistance to disease and to slowrecovery; and the poorer have less access toprophylaxis or to timely and effective treatment.Worse, in rural tropical conditions, these and otheradverse factors usually combine in a seasonalsyndrome during the rains when high exposure toinfection, hard work in cultivation, food shortages,isolation, indebtedness and low access to healthfacilities, occur together and interact. The time whenit most matters to be able to work is then also formany the time when they are physically weakest andmost at risk.

Among the physical factors which impoverish,accidents have been neglected, yet many of the poorare exposed to disabling accidents. Rural activities suchas quarrying, mining, fishing, hunting, building, brick-making, ploughing, and herding, and urban activities –in factories, transport and construction – are oftenphysically hazardous. The resulting accidents are rarelycounted and little considered in the literature, yetagain and again, individual case studies of destitutehouseholds reveal an accident as the event whichimpoverished – disabling an adult, especially abreadwinner. At a sudden blow, the body, the poorperson’s greatest and uninsured asset, is devalued or

ruined. From being an asset, at one stroke it becomesa liability that has to be fed, clothed, housed, andtreated. A livelihood is destroyed, and a householdmade permanently poorer.

Medical costs, too, can impoverish. Where treatmentis sought, as Corbett and Pryer show, it often entailsheavy expenditure until the household exhausts thetangible assets it can sell or mortgage. Where thetreatment fails but the sick person survives, thisleaves the household destitute and with a dependentadult to support. Once the household is assetless andchronically poor, the costs of any further treatmentmay be spread in only small amounts, which arethen, as Pryer found, greatly exceeded by theearnings foregone from work lost through disability.

The importance to the whole household of thephysical capacity of adults is highlighted by thestudies of both Evans from Guinea, and Pryer fromBangladesh. Evans’ model of the progression of riverblindness in a husband shows appalling pressureplaced upon other members of the household,leading to malnourished children and the early deathof his wife. Pryer’s finding – that households wherean adult earner had been sick during the previousmonth were two and a half times more likely thanothers to have a severely malnourished child – carriesthe same implication. Much attention has beenfocused, correctly, on the health and well-being ofwomen and children, and nothing should detractfrom that. But what we now see is that among thevery poor the health of a breadwinner, whethermale or female, is critical for the well-being of therest of the household; and that preventing disabilityin breadwinners, or curing it, can also preventmalnutrition in children. Indeed, the cheapest way toprevent child malnutrition may often be to preventadult sickness, and the most sustainable way toovercome the malnutrition of a child may often beto overcome the disability of an adult.

Implications for policyThe most general policy implication of theseperspectives is to question our assumptions. In Heyer’swords, ‘what seems obvious is often wrong’. Thesolution is again and again to enquire of the poorwhat they want and need, and to strive to understandtheir conditions and how they cope. The answers willpoint both to interventions which enable them to bebetter off in their own terms, and, often, to a changeof priorities and programmes.

IDS Bulletin Volume 37 Number 4 September 2006 37

4Chambers37.4.qxd 31/08/2006 18:02 Page 37

For poor people, there are trade-offs betweenvulnerability and poverty or, to put it positively,between security and income. Some programmes,like the Integrated Rural Development Programme inIndia, seek to raise incomes but at the same timeentail a loan and indebtedness. But poor people allover the world are reluctant to take debts whichincrease their vulnerability. One implication is,therefore, that government programmes which,whatever their benefits, make poor people indebtedor in other ways more vulnerable, should be treatedwith caution. Such vulnerability can be reducedthrough group loans, and through insurance whichcovers the debt if the asset is lost. Reducingvulnerability can be as important an objective asreducing poverty.

More specific policy implications are presented inarticles in this IDS Bulletin. Without summarisingthese, some which stand out are:

To investigate and treat each group and situationin its own right. This IDS Bulletin makes the pointagain and again that the conditions and strategies ofpoor and vulnerable people vary. There are practicallimits to tailoring policy and action to individualpersons, households or groups, and programmestargeted to the poorer are notorious for missingtheir targets and being captured by the less poor.Nevertheless, action can fit better when based onsensitive understanding of who are at risk, what theywant and need, and how they cope.

To support diversification, security and currentcoping strategies. Labour shortages, sources of off-farm incomes, mobility, new economic nichesopened up by economic growth, better marketingand prices for the produce of small farmers, access toservices, cheap food, and a variety and abundance ofcommon property resources, are all examples ofconditions in which poor people stand to do betterthrough diversification. Nabarro, Cassels and Pantstress the basic importance of economic growth, andof a range of inputs, services and welfare provisionthat can be used by households when they needthem. Diversification of what is provided permitsdiversification of income sources and assets.Support for current coping strategies can take manyforms. In detail, much depends on local conditionsand needs. When poor people’s priorities, strategiesand conditions are the starting point, the conclusionsmay not be conventional. Two examples arising from

fieldwork in Mali are improving communications toareas where wild foods are abundant, and enablingpoor people to buy food cheaper in bulk (pers.comm. Susanna Davies).

To monitor vulnerability and act on assetindicators. Early warning systems are now many. AsSwift points out, low assets would be goodindicators of vulnerability. The question is whether itis feasible to monitor the assets and exposure ofvulnerable communities and groups so that actioncan be triggered early enough to prevent orminimise further impoverishment at times of stress.

To put floors under the vulnerable. TheMaharashtra Employment Guarantee Schemeprovides a model of how, given the administrativecapability to respond, poor people can beempowered to demand and receive work andremuneration when they need it. Food-for-workschemes require less sustained administration, andcan have the same effect – putting a floor under thepoor to enable them to survive a bad time withouthaving to become poorer. It seems more cost-effective, besides more humane, to use such meansto reduce vulnerability and prevent impoverishmentthan, once people are poorer or destitute, to try toenable them to recover.

Guaranteed markets at good prices for whateverpoor people sell at bad times are another form offloor. The items sold vary locally, including livestock,poultry, firewood, charcoal and other tree products,and jewellery. Where people are going to sell theseanyway, maintaining the prices they fetch can onlyhelp those who have to sell.

Cheap and accessible food is another form of floor.Whatever their defects, programmes such as AndhraPradesh’s cheap rice help the poorest, providing theyhave access to buying it. Assuring basic food at lowprices is one of the safest ways of mitigating povertyand reducing vulnerability.

To improve fallback food. The neglect of faminecrops and wild food in agricultural research promisesscope for quick gains through the internationaltransfer of germplasm, and for big gains frombreeding. The need for a non-toxin variety of thefallback food kassari dal (Lathyrus sativus) is mentionedby Beck. In this case, a low toxin variety bred inCanada is being transferred to Ethiopia where other

Chambers Vulnerability, Coping and Policy38

4Chambers37.4.qxd 31/08/2006 18:02 Page 38

research is also going on. There are probably manysimilar opportunities, unexploited because famineand fallback foods have not until recently beenconsidered important or of professional interest.

To stress even more the provision of effectivehealth services free or at low cost. Health serviceswhich are cheap or free, and accessible and effective,emerge from studies in this IDS Bulletin as moreimportant than ever. They have a greater role inreducing vulnerability and limiting impoverishmentthan has been recognised. Adult health, especiallythe health of breadwinners, is more important thanmany have supposed for the nutrition and health ofchildren. Many considerations bear on the newfashion for fees and cost recovery as part ofstructural adjustment. But one point to stress in thedebate is that charges for health services threaten todelay or deny treatment precisely to those who mostneed it, and to deter, hurt and impoverish those whoare most vulnerable.

De Waal’s Darfur study draws attention to theimportance of protecting the health, especially ofchildren, in famines. Relief food can have a vital partto play in reducing suffering and in preventingimpoverishment, depending on local conditions; butde Waal’s conclusion that in the 1984–5 famine inDarfur, the cause of excess mortality was sickness, notlack of food, points to the importance ofimmunisation, of clean water, and of enabling peopleto stay where they are instead of migrating todisease-prone concentrations in camps around towns.

In epidemics, to help not only sick adults, but alsotheir dependants. In microcosm, Evans’ study of riverblindness in Guinea gives hints and clues forscenarios for AIDS in rural areas, as its acute phasebecomes prevalent. River blindness differs in thatthose afflicted become disabled and die more slowlythan with AIDS, and so are dependent for longer,but there are also strong similarities. Withconcentrations of acute AIDS, the progression ofdecline described by Evans for a household wouldaffect whole communities, with rising dependencyratios, increased child labour (and withdrawal fromschools), decreasing areas under cultivation, greatervulnerability to other diseases, declining capacity formutual support, and out-migration by older children.In such conditions, the priority will be not just tocare for the sick but to sustain the survivors, who willinclude the very old and the very young.

Implications for researchPolicy for research is one key to better practice.Besides the articles which follow, recent empiricalresearch (e.g. especially Rahmato 1987) has shed newlight on vulnerability and coping. But much alsoremains to be known and understood. Someresearch priorities are indicated in contributions tothis IDS Bulletin. Many more could be suggested.Among those that merit mention are:

Developing simple and sure methods for enablingpoor people to analyse their conditions andidentify their priorities;developing and testing indicators of vulnerability.These might include households’ net assets,labour power, dependency ratios, access to food,and exposure to external stress and shocks;assessing the modes, costs and benefits ofprevention rather than cure – of reducingvulnerability and preventing impoverishmentcompared with enabling recovery;assessing and comparing vulnerability and assetswithin households, between groups of people,and between regions and continents, and howthese change over time, with special attention to(a) groups and areas where vulnerability increases,and (b) impoverishing costs of medical treatment;assessing and comparing coping strategies understress, including sequences of response, thresholdsbetween types of response, and the value and useof different sorts of assets;the effects of civil disorder (war, raiding, refugees,thefts, etc.) on vulnerability and coping strategies. Thisis a gap in this IDS Bulletin, and would include effectson both (a) the economic environment, includinglocal markets and the quantity, quality, and reliabilityof supply, and cost of food and other basic goods forpurchase or barter, and (b) household strategies,including farming practices, food storage and intrahousehold availability and division of labour;relief and development policy, and the fit andeffects of alternative relief policies and practices indifferent conditions and on different groups. Thisincludes the relative importance for survival,limiting suffering, and sustaining livelihoods, offood relief, cash relief, cheap food including bulkpurchase, food-for-work, fodder relief forlivestock, employment guarantee schemes, smallloans, purchase of tangible assets poor people sellat times of stress, health and medicalinterventions, and ways of strengthening andsupporting people’s present strategies for coping.

IDS Bulletin Volume 37 Number 4 September 2006 39

4Chambers37.4.qxd 31/08/2006 18:02 Page 39

the effects of adult disability and death onhousehold viability, strategies and behaviour. Thiscould build on the work of Evans and Pryer, andthe longitudinal studies of Nabarro, Cassels andPant, and would be of special relevance in regionswhere the acute phase of AIDS becomesendemic.

ConclusionThe conclusion has to be humility. Through the newinsights from their fieldwork and analysis, thecontributors to this IDS Bulletin show how ignorant,and sometimes how wrong, we in the developmentprofessions have been. Through local study andindividual cases, they also show how varied is thatuniverse of vulnerability and poverty for which we

seek simple explanations and single solutions. Mostwho read these articles will feel unease at theconfidence with which in the past we havecombined ignorance with error. They may speculatetoo on how wrong we continue to be.

The lesson for the future is to enquire and question,doubting what we think we know, and learningfrom and with those who are vulnerable and poor, ascontributors to this IDS Bulletin have done; and to dothis, not once, not in one locality, and not for onegroup only, but again and again, in each place, andfor each sort of person. For that is the surest path tobetter understanding, and to action that will betterfit and serve the diversity of conditions and peopleand their changing priorities and needs.

Chambers Vulnerability, Coping and Policy40

ReferencesCorbett, J. (1988) ‘Famine and Household Coping

Strategies’, World Development 16.9: 1099–1112Jodha, N.S. (forthcoming) ‘Social Science Research

on Rural Change: Some Gaps (A Footnote toDebate on Rural Poverty)’, in Pranab Bardhan,Rural Economic Change in South Asia: Methodologyof Measurement

Rahmato Dessalegn (1987) ‘Peasant SurvivalStrategies’, in Angela Penrose (ed.), Beyond theFamine: An Examination of the Issues Behind Faminein Ethiopia, Geneva: International Institute forRelief and Development, Food for the HungryInternational

4Chambers37.4.qxd 31/08/2006 18:02 Page 40