Modelling household well-being and poverty trajectories: An application to coastal Bangladesh

Abstract

Resource-based livelihoods are uncertain and potentially unstable due to variability over time, including seasonal variation: this instability threatens marginalised populations who may fall into poverty. However, empirical understanding of trajectories of household wellbeing and poverty is limited. Here, we present a new household-level model of poverty dynamics based on agents and coping strategies-the Household Economy And Poverty trajectory (HEAP) model. HEAP is based on established economic and social insights into poverty dynamics, with a demonstration of the model calibrated with a qualitative and quantitative household survey in coastal Bangladesh. Economic activity in Bangladesh is highly dependent on natural resources; poverty is widespread; and there is high variability in ecosystem services at multiple temporal scales. The results show that long-term decreases in poverty are predicated more on the stability of, and returns from, livelihoods rather than their diversification. Access to natural resources and ecosystem service benefits are positively correlated with stable income and multidimensional well-being. Households that remain in poverty are those who experience high seasonality of income and are involved in small scale enterprises. Hence, seasonal variability in income places significant limits on natural resources providing routes out of poverty. Further, projected economic trends to 2030 lead to an increase in well-being and a reduction in poverty for most simulated household types.

Contrasting development trajectories for coastal Bangladesh to the end of century

“…Archetypes are based on qualitative and seasonal quantitative surveys of 1586 households considering their seasonal livelihood combinations and land size (Adams and Adger 2016;Adams et al 2016a). A coping-strategy optimization routine balances incomes, expenditures, assets and savings to approximate the affordable expenditure of the archetypes (Lázár et al 2017). The main limitations of the ΔDIEM concern the livelihoods: landholdings are equiproportionally distributed based on aggregate demographics and land cover changes in a union; there is no household adaptation beyond coping; households react but do not make long-term predictions; service and manufacturing household incomes are input scenarios.…”

“…Simplified, stylized migration assumptions in models can however provide useful comparative insights, and thus, we only consider economic and environmental push factors and remove financial, network, cultural or family barriers to migration. Informed by the existing literature on the impacts of chronic and acute environmental change and locally specific knowledge of coping strategies (Adger et al 2018;Lázár et al 2017), in this application, a household is identified as susceptible to migration and removed from the study area, when any of the following thresholds are exceeded:…”

“…Integrated assessment of the main system elements, characteristics and interaction provides a framework for such analysis (Anderies et al 2007;Daw et al 2016;Seijger et al 2017). Here we improve and apply an integrated model of coastal Bangladesh (Lázár et al 2017;Lazar et al 2015;Payo et al 2017) to achieve the aim. According to our knowledge, such an integrated, transitional and process-based exploration of plausible long-term trajectories of the coastal zone of Bangladesh has not been done.…”

Studi Kualitatif tentang Jebakan Kemiskinan pada Masyarakat Pesisir di Pasuruan, Jawa Timur

“…Masyarakat pesisir adalah salah satu komunitas yang memiliki problematika sosial sendiri, termasuk dalam hal kemiskinan yang sering kali menjadi realita keseharian yang tidak terelakkan (Lázár et al, 2020;Tobey & Torell, 2006). Studi tentang kemiskinan masyarakat pesisir tampak lebih kompleks karena berkaitan dengan faktor sosial dan institusional, tidak hanya isu ekonomi (Mussadun & Nurpratiwi, 2016;Robles-Zavala, 2014) atau berkenaan dengan ketidakkreatifan mereka dalam menjaga keberlangsungan akses atas lingkungan dan sumber daya laut (Glavovic & Boonzaier, 2007;Lawson et al, 2012).…”

“…Faktor lingkungan memang sangat memengaruhi tingkat kemiskinan di kalangan masyarakat pesisir (Barbier & Hochard, 2019). Gambaran rumah tangga miskin di kawasan pesisir sangatlah kompleks karena selain berkaitan dengan rendahnya tingkat sumber daya manusia, seperti kurang kreativitas dan kemampuan mengelola keuangan, aspek penyebab lain adalah adanya faktor alam yang memaksa mereka untuk bekerja secara musiman (Lázár et al, 2020). Aspek itu juga makin menjerembabkan mereka dalam lubang kemiskinan bilamana terjadi kerusakan atau degradasi lingkungan (Gao et al, 2021;van Wesenbeeck et al, 2015).…”