We find households cope with flood and local rainfall variability in different ways. For example, nonhead working members and the heads of a household are less likely to be in the same occupation, in the same sector, or both in agriculture if the household lives in the flood prone Upazila (Table 2 Part A). This means households are likely to use sectoral diversification to cope with flood risks. On the other hand, households more likely to diversify between self and wage employment to cope with local rainfall variability.

Part B shows alternate results of the same set of estimations using weather station interpolated measures of local rainfall variability. We find that weather station interpolated measures are not always statistically significant. This may be due to the less sophisticated interpolation methods used in our station based measure of local rainfall variability as compared with the data from CRU. Thus we focus on the results from the CRU data in the rest of the paper.

One possible reason for the insignificant relationships between occupational focus and local rainfall variability may be because “normal” flood may reduce the dependency on local rainfall in crop cultivation. Thus, households living in flood prone Upazilas may use normal flood water as a substitute for rain and irrigation water. If this is correct, households in flood prone Upazilas would face different sets of risks as compared with the households in non-flood prone Upazilas.

To test this hypothesis we estimate separate models for non-flood prone Upazilas and flood prone Upazilas. As expected, we find households in non-flood prone Upazilas use sectoral diversify as well as self versus wage employment to cope with local rainfall variability (Table 2 Part C). On the other hand, since “normal” flood insulates households from local rainfall variability risks in flood prone Upazilas, households there do not need to use sectoral or employment diversity to cope with local rainfall variability (Table 2 Part D).

The results presented in Table 2 indicate that availability of water from “normal” flood where present may reduce the ex ante risks from local rainfall variability. Thus, households use sectoral diversification to avoid flood risks in historically flood prone Upazilas. In the non-flood prone Upazilas both occupational and employment type diversification take place within households to avoid the risks stemming from local rainfall variability.

**Table 2: Occupational focus and flood and local rainfall variability, summary results**

|VARIABLES|(1)|(2)|(3)|(4)|(5)|(6)|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|**A.**<br>**Pooled sample, CRU b**|**ased CV of Rain**||||||
|Flooded Upazilas 1998|**-0.331*****|**-0.263****|**-0.273***|0.0717|-0.0252|-0.180|
||(-3.028)|(-2.455)|(-1.833)|(0.485)|(-0.178)|(-1.049)|
|CV Rain CRU|-1.439|-1.237|1.076|**-8.948*****|**-6.434*****|**-6.330****|
||(-0.695)|(-0.601)|(0.376)|(-3.133)|(-2.602)|(-2.322)|
|Observations|3709|3709|2792|1153|3709|3709|
|**B.**<br>**Pooled sample, Statio**|**n based CV of Rain**||||||
|Flooded Upazilas 1998|**-0.350*****|**-0.272****|**-0.328****|-0.0437|-0.100|-0.250|
||(-3.055)|(-2.470)|(-2.068)|(-0.278)|(-0.652)|(-1.323)|
|CV Rain Station Interpolated|-0.831|-0.123|-4.199|**-5.532****|-2.222|-1.789|
||(-0.448)|(-0.0668)|(-1.472)|(-2.021)|(-0.874)|(-0.609)|

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