Toward a theory of resilience for international development applications

Significance This paper lays the theoretical groundwork necessary to inform more precise use of the term “resilience,” to articulate better theories of change, and to promote more focused measures of resilience for international development applications. Our work complements a flurry of recent notes, white papers, and policy briefs on resilience, all offering measurement tools, policy and programming prescriptions, etc., but conspicuously without any explicit theory of resilience as might be applied to the lives of the poor.