Risk and poverty are inextricably linked. Susceptibility to risk is a defining feature of what it means to be poor. Poor people often live in environments characterized by high weather and disease risk, and it is poor households that have the fewest tools to deal with drought, floods, and disease when they occur. Breaking the link between risk and poverty by insuring poor people both lessens the affliction of poverty and allows poor people to participate in income growth. This set of briefs considers how to increase the tools available to poor households to manage agricultural and health risks. The focus is how to develop insurance markets, along with other financial instruments such as credit, savings, and social protection policies. The series does not document the proven impact of insurance markets for the welfare of poor people; rather, it brings together briefs written by businesspeople, policymakers, and researchers that document innovations, lessons learned, and areas of future work and action. Table of Contents: •Innovations in insuring the poor: Overview by Ruth Vagas Hill and Maximo Torero •Risk and the rural poor by John Hoddinott •Risk, poverty and insurance by Stefan Dercon •Microinsurance for health and agricultural risks by Richard Leftley •Sustainability and scalability of index-based insurance for agriculture and rural livelihoods by Ulrich Hess and Peter Hazell •Intelligent design of index insurance for smallholder farmers and pastoralists by Michael R. Carter •Experience with weather index-based insurance in India and Malawi by Xavier Giné •Providing weather index and indemnity insurance in Ethiopia by Eyob Meherette •Index-based livestock insurance in Mongolia by Olivier Mahul, Nathan Belete and Andrew Goodland •Health insurance for the rural poor by David I. Levine •Innovations in health insurance by Johannes Jütting •Microfinance and unexpected consumption expenditures by Richard Hornbeck •Providing insurance through microfinance institutions by Rupalee Ruchismita and Sona Varma •Social protection and risk by John Hoddinott •Index insurance applied to agriculture by Amado Villarreal González
