How can vulnerable households sustain an escape from poverty, weathering the ongoing and multiple shocks and stresses that they will face over their lifetimes? This month, Agrilinks is excited to team up with the USAID Center for Resilience to examine the evidence around the important topic of resilience and sustainable poverty escapes.

As noted in the accompanying guidance document, resilience is a core objective for Feed the Future under the U.S. Global Food Security Strategy (GFSS). This reflects the reality that poor and near-poor households and communities live in increasingly complex risk environments and are subject to a range of shocks and stresses that threaten their food security, nutrition and ability to sustainably escape poverty. In the extreme, this has resulted in recurrent, large-scale humanitarian emergencies that threaten the lives and livelihoods of the most vulnerable, negatively impacting national and regional economies and costing the U.S. Government and others billions of dollars in humanitarian spending and emergency food assistance. This has lead to a recognition that resilience is a critical pillar of long-term development.

USAID has invested in important research to understand what differentiates households that manage to hold on to progress in wealth and wellbeing in the face of shocks and stressors, ranging from personal illness to natural disasters. While resilience is complex, context-specific and not easily boiled down to a set of recommended practices, factors generally affiliated with more resilient households include:

• Household resources: Owning productive resources, such as land and livestock
• Household characteristics: Smaller households and those in which the head of the household has an education
• Household activities: Diversification into non-farm activities
• Transfers: Female-headed households receiving remittances

This month, we’ll be releasing a series of country case studies commissioned by the USAID Center for Resilience aimed at expanding our understanding of the drivers of sustained poverty escapes across contexts and teasing out policy and programming implications. Look out soon for an invitation to a seminar co-sponsored by the USAID Center for Resilience, Agrilinks and Marketlinks on November 28, where the lead researchers from these studies will share cross-cutting findings from seven different country contexts.  

In the meantime, take a moment to explore the great resources we’ve compiled in the sidebar accompanying this post, including free online courses, policy briefs, programming guidance and more.

We look forward to engaging with the Agrilinks community this month and receiving your contributions on this important topic!