ABSTRACT
Reducing poverty and hunger, as stated in the rst MDG, is likely to be the most widely shared development objective. Hunger, with emaciated children shown stunned or dying on our television screens, is simply repulsive. Few can remain indi erent. Vulnerability to shocks-–a tsunami, a drought, a ood, a pandemic, a civil war-–similarly arouses broad compassion of the Rawlsian “it could be me” type (Rawls, 1971). It is also a major source of new poor. Reducing vulnerability to shocks and the associated irreversibilities in health, education, and asset endowments is thus a major instrument for poverty reduction-and reducing vulnerability to poverty may have more than intrinsic value for the poor if maintaining a share of the population in poverty is inef- cient, reducing growth and imposing a social cost shared by all (Ravallion, 2012). As with all aspects of development, we need to address poverty through both positive and normative analyses. How do we characterize and explain poverty through diagnostics and identi cation of causal determinants? What can be done to reduce poverty using well designed and targeted policies and programs?
