Coping with Climatic Shocks: Empirical Evidence from Rural Coastal Odisha, India

Households in India face numerous climatic shocks, including cyclones and floods, and these extreme events have a negative impact on their welfare. Although these impacts are likely to increase in the foreseeable future due to climate change, households are also taking up various coping measures to deal with the impacts from past shocks. Hence, assessing the impact of shocks and identifying the determinants of various coping options have relevant policy implications in the context of designing a disaster mitigation policy. This study examines the consumption behaviour and the determinants of traditional coping mechanisms adopted by the vulnerable households using household-level data collected from cyclone and flood prone districts of the state of Odisha in eastern India. The findings suggest that: (i) partial consumption smoothing is exhibited with respect to household-specific characteristics, (ii) increasing impacts on assets and health expenditure due to floods inhibit consumption patterns of households and (iii) the adopted traditional coping mechanisms are specific to location and household characteristics.