Measuring Individual Vulnerability

Abstract

Standard poverty analysis makes statements about deprivation after the veil of\nuncertainty has been lifted. This implies that there is no meaningful role for risk as\npart of an assessment of potentially low states of well-being. In this paper, we\nintroduce a concept of vulnerability, as a threat of poverty, with downside risk at its\ncore. More specifically, we define a vulnerability measure as an assessment of the\nmagnitude of the threat of poverty, measured ex-ante, before uncertainty is resolved.\nWe describe the welfare-economic foundations for desirable properties of a\nvulnerability measure and assess to what extent some measures used in empirical\nwork abide by them. We also present two families of measures that are fully consistent\nwith our axiomatic approach.

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