households’ ability to cushion the impact of shocks based on the severity of current coping strategies, households’ ability to replenish stock of assets and/or savings used to mitigate current shocks, and the belief that shocks can reoccur.<sup>19</sup> As a result, households that use severe coping strategies such as selling productive assets or dissaving may be unable to mitigate the impact of repeated shocks and thus become less resilient. Based on the coping strategies discussed in the previous section, we construct a household CSI by weighting the individual strategies reported by the households based on their severity. For instance, strategies such as selling assets, dissaving, or borrowing money carry a higher weight than others such as reducing consumption, cutting on number of meals, or relocating consumption among household members. Therefore, higher values of the CSI indicate an intense use of coping strategies when faced with a shock, hence a higher likelihood of less resilience.

Poor households are likely to be less resilient. The average CSI for poor households was 3.9 in 2009 compared to 3.57 for non-poor households. In 2014/15, the average for poor households was higher than for non-poor households—2.93 compared to 2.72. Similarly, households in the bottom 40 percent of the consumption per capita distribution had the highest CSI. This implies that poor Sudanese households use more severe coping strategies to mitigate the impact of shocks. In the context of resilience to shocks, the use of severe coping strategies such as selling assets may be triggered by the low capacity to use less severe coping strategies such as increasing labor supply, petty trading, and borrowing to mitigate the impact of shocks. Therefore, to improve the resilience of poor Sudanese households, access to markets and financial institutions needs to be improved to reduce the use of severe coping strategies in the event of a shock that may trap them into poverty.

In terms of household livelihood, agricultural households and those relying on remittances are likely to be less resilient. Crop farmers in Sudan use the most severe coping strategies. The average CSI for crop farmers was 4.25 in 2009 and 3.16 in 2014/15. Severe coping strategies are also observed among households relying on remittances and animal husbandry. For agricultural households, assets such as farm land, seeds, and livestock are important inputs in their livelihood. Selling these assets in the event of a shock (particularly given that a majority of these households rely on rain-fed farming and variations in rainfall exposes them to significant risk) may affect their productivity and welfare. However, in the absence of formal insurance and/or credit, social protection programs, or programs to build resilience, they can only resort to selling these assets to mitigate the impact of shocks.

Across states, households in the Darfur, Kordofan, and parts of the Nile regions appear to be less resilient. The use of severe coping strategies in these regions is in line with results described earlier. The main livelihood of households in these regions is agriculture related (Figure 6). Thus, the observation that agricultural households are likely to be less resilient to shocks is shown across household livelihoods and across states. In states such as Khartoum, where wages and salaried activities are the main livelihood, coping strategies used to mitigate shocks are less severe, indicating better resilience to shocks.

> 19 Both rounds of data indicate that agriculture- and weather-related shocks were common in Sudan in both 2009 and 2014/15. Frequent occurrence of these shocks may weaken resilience of households—particularly agricultural households who often rely on selling their assets to cope with shocks.

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