Index Based Livestock Insurance (IBLI) Project

The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Cornell University, the BASIS I4 Index Insurance Innovation Initiative housed at the University of California, Davis and Syracuse University, in collaboration with a host of implementing partners, have spent the last several years designing, promoting, and evaluating the impact of a market-mediated index-based livestock insurance (IBLI) product, intended to protect pastoralists from drought-related livestock mortality, in Marsabit district of Northern Kenya and Borena Zone of Southern Ethiopia.

More information about the product, project, partners, and donors can be found on the IBLI website.

To monitor and evaluate the uptake and impact of the IBLI product and a range of encouragement tactics, research collaborators designed a multi-year impact evaluation strategy relying on household survey data collected before and during the introduction of IBLI.

Related Papers

• Elizabeth R. Bageant, Christopher B. Barrett, "Gender Differences in Demand for Index-based Livestock Insurance"; added April 2015.
• Kibrom Tafere, Christopher B. Barrett, Erin Lentz, Birhanu T. Ayana, "The Subjective Well-being Gains from Insurance that Doesn't Pay Out"; added April 2015.
• Nathaniel D. Jensen, Andrew G. Mude, and Christopher B. Barrett, "How Basis Risk and Spatiotemporal Adverse Selection Influence Demand for Index Insurance: Evidence from Northern Kenya," December 2014.
• Nathaniel D. Jensen, Christopher B. Barrett and Andrew G. Mude, "Basis Risk and the Welfare Gains from Index Insurance: Evidence from Northern Kenya," December 2014.
• Nathan Jensen, Megan Sheahan, Christopher B. Barrett, and Andrew Mude, "Hunger Safety Net Program (HSNP) and Index Based Livestock Insurance (IBLI) baseline comparison," November 2014.
• Kazushi Takahashi, Munenobu Ikegami, Megan Sheahan and Christopher B. Barrett, "Quasi-Experimental Evidence on the Drivers of Index-Based Livestock Insurance Demand in Southern Ethiopia," IDE Discussion Paper No. 480, September 2014.
• Sommarat Chantarat, Andrew G. Mude, Christopher B. Barrett, and Calum G. Turvey, "Welfare Impacts of Index Insurance in the Presence of a Poverty Trap," June 2014 revision.
• Sommarat Chantarat, Andrew G. Mude, Christopher B. Barrett and Michael R. Carter, "Designing Index-Based Livestock Insurance for Managing Asset Risk in Northern Kenya," Journal of Risk and Insurance, Volume 80, Issue 1, pages 205–237, March 2013, DOI: 10.1111/j.1539-6975.2012.01463.x.
• Andrew Mude, Sommarat Chantarat, Christopher B. Barrett, Michael Carter, Munenobu Ikegami, and John McPeak, "Insuring Against Drought-Related Livestock Mortality: Piloting Index Based Livestock Insurance in Northern Kenya," June 2010.
• Andrew Mude, Christopher B. Barrett, Michael R. Carter, Sommarat Chantarat, Munenobu Ikegami, and John McPeak, " Index Based Livestock Insurance for Northern Kenya's Arid and Semi-Arid Lands: The Marsabit Pilot" January 2009.

A full list of publications using this data can be found here.

All of the currently available data, questionnaires, and codebooks can be downloaded from the IBLI website directly. The Marsabit (northern Kenya) data is accessible here and the Borena (southern Ethiopia) data is accessible here. Please contact the IBLI team with any questions about the project and data.

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