The paradox of vulnerability: An income approach in assessing the effect of climatic shocks on households in Camarines Norte

This thesis uses an income approach in analyzing the effect of climatic shocks on the poverty and vulnerability situation of the two municipalities in Camarines Norte: San Lorenzo Ruiz and San Vicente. Between 2003 and 2006, Bicol has been hit by several super typhoons, which left them heavily devastated. In order to investigate the effect, we utilize a panel data from Community Based Monitoring Survey (CBMS) Network of the two municipalities in 2003 and 2006. We adapted a similar framework from Glewwe and Hall [1998], however, instead of using consumption, we use $1-a- day per capita threshold. The static regressions revealed that higher educational attainment, white-collar employment, smaller household size, and more wage earners in a family will help households transcend into poverty. However, using our vulnerability regression, the results were overturned. We raise several reasons why even the highly educated heads, heads working in white-collar jobs, households will smaller households size and more wage earners are still considered to be vulnerable. In order to elucidate further, we ran several counter-factual simulations by only analyzing particular groups like female-headed households, single parent-headed households, single parent-headed households, agricultural households, young households and many more