_Table 1: Descriptive Statistics of main explanatory variables_

|**Variable**|**Obs**|**Mean**|**Std. Dev.**|**Min**|**Max**|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|Urban|74448|0.617|0.486|0|1|
|Male|74448|0.471|0.499|0|1|
|Single|74448|0.393|0.488|0|1|
|Age|74448|32.511|21.784|0|98|
|Ownership|74448|0.675|0.468|0|1|
|Highestgrade obtained|42613|7.181|3.554|1|15|
|Employed|68609|0.478|0.5|0|1|
|Self-Employed|33580|0.271|0.445|0|1|
|Public sector|33580|0.072|0.258|0|1|
|Informal|17884|0.584|0.493|0|1|
|No. of Children|74448|1.157|1.151|0|8|
|Number of children attending<br>school|74448|0.756|0.908|0|6|
|Number of members in main<br>household|74412|4.322|1.893|1|17|
|Number of household<br>members out of labor force|74448|1.492|1.173|0|8|
|Crime Index|71044|0.096|0.359|0|10|
|SecurityIndex|71011|3.473|1.769|0|5|
|Environmental Index|74448|0.015|0.155|0|4|
|Financial literacy|74448|0.225|0.418|0|1|
|Occupation rate|74448|0.545|0.051|0.279|0.75|
|Unemployment rate|74448|0.043|0.027|0|0.27|
|Share of self-employed|74448|0.274|0.066|0.133|0.789|
|Share of entrepreneurs|74448|0.043|0.025|0|0.498|
|Share of public sector<br>employees|74448|0.071|0.037|0|0.333|
|Share of children attending<br>school|74448|0.66|0.071|0.143|1|
|Share of people with<br>secondaryeducation|74448|0.214|0.118|0|0.62|

_Notes: The table shows summary statistics at the individual level in El Salvador for survey data collected in 2019. The number of observations varies with the number of people eligible to the respective survey questions. We define informality as all employed people who do not have any health insurance or have no signed work contract. The number of observations is low in this case, given that only 17,884 people responded to the question on if they have a signed work contract or not. The crime index reflects the number of crimes a person reports to have been subject to and ranges from 0 to 10. Similarly, the security index reflects the personal restrictions, such as not going out at night, a person is subject to due to perceived insecurities. This index ranges from 0 to 5. The environmental riks index ranges from 0 to 4. For a detailed overview of the indices see Annex 5. Source: World Bank estimates based on EHPM (2019)._

**Relying on the variables as they are reported in Table 1 could result in a biased estimator of vulnerability to poverty due to missing observations.** As soon as individuals report a missing observation in one of the variables included in the model, they are excluded from the estimation due to listwise deletion. This selective deletion of individuals might result in biased observations, which could be especially pronounced in the case of labor market variables, but also the share of children attending school. We therefore replace missing observations with zeros in these cases (Annex 6 presents the respective Summary Statistics). We verify the validity of our findings in a robustness check. There is one variable, which still reports a higher number of missing observations: the highest grade obtained. While we include this variable in our main empirical specification, we exclude it in one of our validity tests.

**We estimate results for the overall population but also distinguish between rural and urban areas; we also analyze the development of vulnerability to poverty over time and at the department level.** We estimate vulnerability to poverty at the yearly level for the overall population, but also the rural and

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