ASSESSING HOUSEHOLD’S VULNERABILITY TO FLOOD IN THE

FLOOD AFFECTED AREAS OF THE PROVINCE OF KHYBER

PUKHTOONKHWA

A household’s observed poverty status is an ex-post measure of a

household’s well being (or lack thereof). But for thinking about forward
looking anti poverty interventions that aim to prevent rather than
alleviating poverty, what really matters is the vulnerability of households
to poverty, i.e., the ex-ante risk that a household will, if currently non
poor, fall below the poverty line, or if currently poor, will remain in
poverty. This concept can be shown in the form of mathematical equation
as follows
(Vulnerability)ht=Pr[(C)h,t+1<z]
The above equation means that vulnerability of the household h at time t
is equal to the probability of the household h to fall behind a pre-specified
poverty line z at some future period t+1. Poverty in the above equation is
represented by the household consumption C.
(C)h,t+1=F[(X)h]
(X)h includes all those characteristics, shocks, and responses of the
households that can affect the poverty or more specifically the
consumption of the people. Most of the studies on vulnerability
assessment focus on the specific household characteristics like size of the
household, education of the head of the household, dependency ratio etc,
while some studies have focused the specific shocks like floods, droughts
etc along with household characteristics.
This study will not only focus on the specific household characteristics
and shocks to households but also will focus on the specific coping
strategies of the households in the face of natural disasters like flood.