Refugee Studies

Abstract

Vulnerability and poverty are not synonymous: poverty increases vulnerability because lack of resources intensifies defencelessness against risks and shocks. Economists define vulnerability more simply - or simplistically - as the risk of future poverty. Poverty ‘signifies not having enough now, while vulnerability is about having a high probability now of suffering a shortfall in the future’. Vulnerability is a composite of exposure to risks and inability to cope, as reflected in the pseudo-equation. In 1989, Robert also identified several types of ‘damaging loss’ that follow from a ‘lack of means to cope’ - ‘becoming or being physically weaker, economically impoverished, socially dependent, humiliated or psychologically harmed’. Social protection was devised by development donors in the late 1990s, precisely to address the vulnerability and insecurity that conventional anti-poverty policies overlook.