Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
SpringerLink
Log in

Measuring Household Vulnerability to Climate Change

  • Reference work entry
  • First Online:
Handbook of Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation

  • 5405 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter summarizes research on the potential impacts of climate change on households, with a particular focus on contributions from different methodological approaches to understanding impacts for households in developing countries. Agriculture has been a central focus of this literature, both because of the sensitivity of the agricultural sector to a changing climate and also because of the importance of agriculture for the livelihoods of the poor. The literature review shows that developing countries are largely expected to be disproportionally hurt by projected changes in temperature, precipitation, and extreme events. On the other hand, the actual household level response to these changes is not well understood, and there are still gaps in the methodological approaches to understanding these issues. The recent literature reveals promising approaches that may complement and improve existing methods as more data becomes available.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 1,799.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Arndt C, Chinowsky P, Robinson S, Strzepek K, Tarp F, Thurlow J (2012) Economic development under climate change. Rev Develop Econom 16(3):369–377

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Besley T (1995) Chapter 36 Savings, credit and insurance. In: Behrman J, Srinivasan TN (eds) Handbook of development economics, vol 3. Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp 2123–2207

    Google Scholar 

  • Binswanger HP, Rosenzweig MR (1986) Behavioural and material determinants of production relations in agriculture. J Develop Stud 22(3):503–539

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bryan E, Deressa TT, Gbetibouo GA, Ringler C (2009) Adaptation to climate change in Ethiopia and South Africa: options and constraints. Environ Sci Policy 12(4):413–426

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Burke M, Emerick K (2013) Adaptation to climate change: evidence from US agriculture. Unpublished, University of California, Berkeley

    Google Scholar 

  • Burke M, Lobell D (2010) Food security and adaptation to climate change: what do we know? In: Climate change and food security. Springer, Dordrecht, pp 133–153

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Chen S, Ravallion M (2010) The developing world is poorer than we thought, but no less successful in the fight against poverty. Quartr J Econom 125(4):1577–1625

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cline WR (1996) The impact of global warming of agriculture: comment. Am Econom Rev 86:1309–1311

    Google Scholar 

  • Darwin R (1999) The impact of global warming on agriculture: a Ricardian analysis: comment. Am Econom Rev 89:1049–1052

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Darwin R, Kennedy D (2000) Economic effects of CO2 fertilization of crops: transforming changes in yield into changes in supply. Environ Model Assessment 5(3):157–168

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • de Janvry A, Fafchamps M, Sadoulet E (1991) Peasant household behaviour with missing markets: some paradoxes explained. Econom J 101(409):1400–1417

    Google Scholar 

  • Dell M, Jones BF, Olken BA (2013) What do we learn from the weather? The New Climate-Economy Literature. J Econom Literature 52(3):740–98

    Google Scholar 

  • Dercon S (2002) Income risk, coping strategies, and safety nets. World Bank Res Observ 17(2):141–166

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Deressa TT, Hassan RM, Ringler C, Alemu T, Yesuf M (2009) Determinants of farmers’ choice of adaptation methods to climate change in the Nile Basin of Ethiopia. Glob Environ Chang 19(2):248–255

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Di Falco S, Veronesi M (2013) How can African agriculture adapt to climate change? A counterfactual analysis from Ethiopia. Land Econ 89(4):743–766

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Di Falco S, Yesuf M, Kohlin G, Ringler C (2012) Estimating the impact of climate change on agriculture in low-income countries: household level evidence from the Nile Basin, Ethiopia. Environ Res Econom 52(4):457–478

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Easterlin RA (2000) The worldwide standard of living since 1800. J Econom Perspect 14(1):7–26

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hanemann WM (2000) Adaptation and its measurement. Clim Change 45(3):571–581

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hertel TW, Rosch SD (2010) Climate change, agriculture, and poverty. Appl Econ Perspect Pol (Autumn 2010) 32(3):355–385

    Google Scholar 

  • Hertel TW, Burke MB, Lobell DB (2010) The poverty implications of climate-induced crop yield changes by 2030. Glob Environ Chang 20(4):577–585

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • IPCC (2013) Summary for policymakers. In: Stocker T, Qin D, Plattner G-K, Tignor M, Allen S, Boschung J, Nauels A, Xia Y, Bex V, Midgley P (eds) Climate change 2013: the physical science basis. Contribution of working group I to the fifth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK/New York

    Google Scholar 

  • IPCC (2014) Summary for policymakers. In: Field C, Barros V, Dokken D, Mach K, Mastrandrea M, Bilir T, Chatterjee M, Ebi K, Estrada Y, Genova R, Girma B, Kissel E, Levy A, MacCracken S, Mastrandrea P, White LL (eds) Climate change 2014: impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability. Part A: global and sectoral aspects. Contribution of working group II to the fifth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK/New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Jones PG, Thornton PK (2003) The potential impacts of climate change on maize production in Africa and Latin America in 2055. Glob Environ Chang 13(1):51–59

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kurukulasuriya P, Rosenthal S (2003) Climate change and agriculture: a review of impacts and adaptations. World Bank, Washington, DC

    Google Scholar 

  • Löfgren H, Robinson S (1999) Nonseparable farm household decisions in a computable general equilibrium model. Am J Agric Econom 81(3):663–670

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mendelsohn R (2008) The impact of climate change on agriculture in developing countries. J Nat Res Policy Res 1(1):5–19

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mendelsohn R, Dinar A (1999) Climate change, agriculture, and developing countries: does adaptation matter? World Bank Res Observ 14(2):277–293

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mendelsohn R, Nordhaus WD, Shaw D (1994) The impact of global warming on agriculture: a Ricardian analysis. Am Econom Rev 84(4):753–771

    Google Scholar 

  • Morton JF (2007) The impact of climate change on smallholder and subsistence agriculture. Proc Natl Acad Sci 104(50):19680–19685

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nakicenovic N, Swart R (2000) Special report on emissions scenarios. Edited by Nebojsa Nakicenovic and Robert Swart, pp 612. ISBN 0521804930. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, July 2000, p 1

    Google Scholar 

  • Nelson GC, Rosegrant MW, Koo J, Robertson R, Sulser T, Zhu T, Ringler C, Msangi S, Palazzo A, Batka M et al (2009) Climate change: Impact on agriculture and costs of adaptation. International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, DC

    Google Scholar 

  • Niang I, Ruppel O, Abdrabo M, Essel A, Lennard C, Padgham J, Urquhart P (2014) Africa. In: Field C, Barros V, Dokken D, Mach K, Mastrandrea M, Bilir T, Chatterjee M, Ebi K, Estrada Y, Genova R, Girma B, Kissel E, Levy A, MacCracken S, Mastrandrea P, White LL (eds) Climate change 2014: impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability. Part B: regional aspects. Contribution of working group II to the fifth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK/New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Parry M, Rosenzweig C, Iglesias A, Fischer G, Livermore M (1999) Climate change and world food security: a new assessment. Glob Environ Chang 9:S51–S67

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pauw K, Thurlow J, Bachu M, Van Seventer DE (2011) The economic costs of extreme weather events: a hydrometeorological CGE analysis for Malawi. Environ Develop Econom 16(02):177–198

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Porter J, Xie L, Challinor A, Cochrane K, Howden S, Iqbal M, Lobell D, Travasso M (2014) Food security and food production systems. In: Field C, Barros V, Dokken D, Mach K, Mastrandrea M, Bilir T, Chatterjee M, Ebi K, Estrada Y, Genova R, Girma B, Kissel E, Levy A, MacCracken S, Mastrandrea P, White LL (eds) Climate change 2014: impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability. Part A: global and sectoral aspects. Contribution of working group II to the fifth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK/New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosenzweig C, Parry ML (1994) Potential impact of climate change on world food supply. Nature 367(6459):133–138

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schlenker W, Lobell DB (2010) Robust negative impacts of climate change on African agriculture. Environ Res Lett 5(1):014010

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schmidhuber J, Tubiello FN (2007) Global food security under climate change. Proc Natl Acad Sci 104(50):19703–19708

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Singh I, Squire L, Strauss J (1986) Agricultural household models: extensions, applications, and policy. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore

    Google Scholar 

  • Skjeflo S (2013) Measuring household vulnerability to climate change – why markets matter. Glob Environ Chang 23(6):1694–1701

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Skoufias E, Rabassa M, Olivieri S, Brahmbhatt M (2011) The poverty impacts of climate change – a review of the evidence. World Bank Policy Research Paper. World Bank, Washington, DC

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Taraz V (2013) Adaptation to climate change: historical evidence from the Indian monsoon. Department of Economics, Yale University, New Haven

    Google Scholar 

  • Thurlow J, Zhu T, Diao X (2012) Current climate variability and future climate change: estimated growth and poverty impacts for Zambia. Rev Develop Econom 16(3):394–411

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wooldridge JM (2010) Econometric analysis of cross section and panel data. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  • World Bank (2014) World development indicators 2014. http://www.scribd.com/doc/222646575/World-Development-Indicators-2014. Accessed 26 Aug 2014

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. UMB School of Economics and Business, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, 5003, 1432, Ås, Norway

    Sofie Waage Skjeflo

Authors
  1. Sofie Waage Skjeflo
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sofie Waage Skjeflo .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Departmemt of Chemical Engineering, University of Mississippi, Oxford, Mississippi, USA

    Wei-Yin Chen

  2. National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science & Technology (AIST), Nagoya, Japan

    Toshio Suzuki

  3. Institute of Advanced Engineering Technologies, University of Applied Sciences FH Technikum Wien, Vienna, Austria

    Maximilian Lackner

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this entry

Cite this entry

Skjeflo, S.W. (2017). Measuring Household Vulnerability to Climate Change. In: Chen, WY., Suzuki, T., Lackner, M. (eds) Handbook of Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14409-2_74

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation