Shocks & Livelihoods
Households around the world face various shocks, including climatic, economic, environmental, and conflict-related stresses. Such shocks impact household livelihoods in numerous domains including physical, human, and social capital. In the absence of strong institutional support to help absorb these shocks, households are forced to adopt harmful coping strategies to ensure adequate food security and welfare. In the long-run, this can leave households more vulnerable to future shocks, creating poverty traps. ISDC studies how households adapt to various community-level and idiosyncratic shocks and evaluates how humanitarian and development programs assists the most vulnerable households in their adaptation strategies. We focus particularly on the analysis of shocks and livelihoods in conflict-affected, fragile and humanitarian settings.