While it has long been demonstrated (Rosenzweig and Binswanger, 1993; Banerjee
and Newman, 1994) that considerations of risk and uncertainty are key to understand
the dynamics leading to and perpetuating poverty, it is only recently that policy
makers have taken a more active interest in trying to incorporate considerations of
risk and vulnerability into their strategies to reduce poverty (Christiaensen and
Subbarao, 2001). The aim of this paper is to quantify the severity of vulnerability by
generating the first quantitative assessment of vulnerability in Uganda, a country at
the forefront of poverty analysis. The findings support the hypothesis that during the
past decade, alongside sharp reductions in poverty, vulnerability to poverty in Uganda
declined from 57% in 1992/93 to 25% in 1999/00. Such results highlight the
importance for policy makers to distinguish between the effective implementation of
poverty-prevention and poverty-reduction programmes.