Subjective and objective measures of household resilience capacity in sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Resilience plays an essential role in sustaining and improving people’s livelihood during environmental changes. While several resilience measurements approaches have emerged, few studies compare the use of different resilience measurement tools. This paper addresses this gap by investigating how subjectively evaluated resilience measurements compare and relate to objective measurement tools. Using regionally representative household data of 24,516 households in 9 countries, we investigate whether the Subjective self-Evaluated Resilience Score (SERS) can act as a substitute to the objectively evaluated Resilience Capacity Index (RCI) estimated through the Resilience Index and Measurement Analysis (RIMA) approach. We further examine how these measures capture the effect of experiencing climate and socio-economic shocks on resilience. Finally, we investigate the determinants of these measures. We find that overall, the correlations between SERS and RCI are weak and not consistent across countries. Further, we find that while several determinants have the same direction and almost the same magnitude of effect for both SERS and RCI. However, the effect of having experienced past shocks on these resilience capacity measurements differs as SERS decreases whereas RCI increases. We therefore conclude that SERS and RCI are not substitutes, and that they may be capturing various and different aspects of resilience capacities. This is essential to consider when designing targeting criteria for resilience-building projects and ensuring proper measurement and evaluation.