Clare Balboni, from London School of Economics, will present "Weathering Poverty"

Abstract: The overlapping incidence of extreme poverty and climate damages globally throws up the important open question of whether anti-poverty programs can shield vulnerable populations from worsening weather shocks. To study this question, we overlay high-resolution, satellite-based drought and flood measures on household survey panel data from the randomized evaluation of a flagship anti-poverty graduation program in Bangladesh. We test whether receiving the program makes people more resilient to unpredictable weather shocks, controlling for baseline weather risk. The results suggest that the program helps to support consumption, and keeps recipients out of poverty, in the face of unexpected drought and flood shocks. This enhanced climate resilience is underpinned by their increased ability to maintain and diversify productive assets and labor activities and does not result from treated households drawing down transferred assets.  The finding that big-push poverty reduction programs increase resilience to weather shocks through such mechanisms suggests that such programs may provide a promising means of protecting the increasing numbers of climate vulnerable households worldwide.