Fragility exposure index: concepts, measurement, and application

Definitions of fragility are focused at the level of the state, but this should not be considered to suggest that individuals with heterogeneous endowments experience a state of fragility in the same way. Nor does it suggest that all subregions of a fragile country exist in this state. In turn, experience of fragility varies not just at national level but also between districts and between individuals. To test this idea, we develop a fragility exposure module, which was inserted into the standard house-hold survey. We consider three components of fragility: human security, economic inclusion, and social cohesion. We index data collected from a survey in Kenya. We show that experience of fragility in Kenya is in the midrange for most individuals, with notable heterogeneities. Those living in Nairobi experience higher levels of fragility than those in other areas. Young people experience higher levels of fragility than older individuals. We find no evidence of overall differences between men and women. These findings demonstrate the importance of capturing the experience of fragility at the individual level. More specifically, they also provide an important base to understanding which groups would benefit most from pro- stability interventions and for testing the performance of such interventions

IFAD RESEARCH SERIES 54 Rural youth in the context of fragility and conflict

Despite accounting for only 7 per cent of the world’s population, rural youth account for more than 10 per cent of the world’s conflict-exposed population. In 2016, alone, over 350 million rural youth lived in conflict-affected countries. Despite conflict’s being defined as “development in reverse”, however, we find a general lack of research focusing specifically on young people living in rural areas. Yet, from wider literature, we know that conflict is a cause of adversities across a range of economic and non-economic indicators. When young people experience violence in consecutive life stages, adversities from one stage – such as weakened education – can be carried forward into subsequent life stages - such as transition to employment. In this background paper, we show that exposure to violence increases infant mortality, reduces birthweight, harms child health, damages human capital accumulation, restricts performance in education and interacts negatively with labour market opportunities. Despite this accumulated knowledge, however, we note that key knowledge gaps remain, especially when it comes to understanding the programmes that can mitigate the damage exposure to conflict causes. There is, therefore, an urgent need to understand how and why exposure to conflict harms the lives of rural youth, and perhaps more importantly, how it harms those lives differently from those of other socio-demographic groups. Given that rural youth are disproportionately affected by conflict, there is also a need for the design of, and learning from, programmes that are specifically targeted at protecting and empowering rural youth during the post-conflict phase

The life with corona survey

The COVID-19 pandemic is a global crisis affecting everyone. Yet, its challenges and countermeasures vary significantly over time and space. Individual experiences of the pandemic are highly heterogeneous and its impacts span and interlink multiple dimensions, such as health, economic, social and political impacts. Therefore, there is a need to disaggregate “the pandemic”: analysing experiences, behaviours and impacts at the micro level and from multiple disciplinary perspectives. Such analyses require multi-topic pan-national survey data that are collected continuously and can be matched with other datasets, such as disease statistics or information on countermeasures. To this end, we introduce a new dataset that matches these desirable properties - the Life with Corona (LwC) survey - and perform illustrative analyses to show the importance of such micro data to understand how the pandemic and its countermeasures shape lives and societies over time