On Their Own: Exploring Socioeconomic Vulnerability and Resilience in Rural Dry Zone Communities in Myanmar

Sammanfattning: This paper revolves around exploring the underlying trends and relationships in socioeconomic vulnerability and resilience in Myanmar’s Dry Zone, with the overarching goal of identifying which are the most and least vulnerable types of households and why. This was done by applying Füssels 2007 conceptual framework for vulnerability to a quantitative data processing/interpretation approach termed Umbrella Modeling (developed by the Social Policy and Poverty Research Group in Myanmar), to study a dataset based on 1785 structured household interviews from the Dry Zone. After examining the three factors of location, demographics and relationships between the attributes that collectively determine what constitutes vulnerability and resilience, it was found that the extent to which households are socially included (or excluded) by their community appeared to be the most decisive factor. The most resilient households in the sample were those that were closely integrated into formal and informal community institutions, and the most vulnerable were those that, for whatever reason, lived outside of them.