This paper investigates vulnerability to poverty in Haiti. Research in vulnerability in
developing countries has been scarce due to the high data requirements of vulnerability
studies (e.g. panel or long series of cross-sections). The methodology adopted here allows
the assessment of vulnerability to poverty by exploiting the short panel structure of nested
data at different levels. The decomposition method reveals that vulnerability in Haiti is
largely a rural phenomenon and that schooling correlates negatively with vulnerability.
Most importantly, among the different shocks affecting household’s income, it is found
that meso-level shocks are in general far more important than covariate shocks. This
finding points to some interesting policy implications in decentralizing policies to
alleviate vulnerability to poverty.
Keywords: vulnerability, poverty, hierarchical model, Republic of Haiti.
JEL classification: C19, C11, I39, R20.