ABSTRACT
It is well known that poor people, more so than the better-off, are threatened by joblessness, illness, injuries, harassment and so on. Irregular jobs, insufficient calorie intake and unhygienic and unsafe environments make their lives unstable and risky. Moreover, these people have great difficulty in recovering once affected, because of their limited access to various resources such as finances, instruments of livelihood, appropriate information and social networks on which they can rely in emergencies. In other words, they are vulnerable. Indeed, vulnerability – the (in)ability of poor households to cope with risks (Chua et al., 1999, p. 3) – is one aspect of poverty that has caught the attention of major development organizations such as the World Bank in recent years.
