Hurricane Mitch and the Livelihoods of the Rural Poor in Honduras Saul S. Morris, Oscar Neidecker-Gonzales, Calogero Carletto, Marcial Munguía, and Quentin Wodon 1 Summary. – This paper assesses the extent to which Hurricane Mitch affected the rural poor in Honduras and whether national and international aid efforts succeeded in providing relief. One of every two surveyed households incurred medical, housing, or other costs due to Mitch. One in three suffered from a loss in crops. One in five lost assets. One in ten lost wages or business income. Relief was most often provided by churches and NGOs. It consisted mainly of food, clothing, and medicine, and it amounted to less than one tenth of the losses incurred by households. Keywords: Honduras, central America, disaster relief, poverty, Mitch Corresponding author: Saul S. Morris IFPRI – FCN 2033 K St NW Washington DC 20006 tel: 202 862 5691 fax: 202 467 4439 e-mail: s.morris@cgiar.org 1 Morris, Neidecker-Gonzales, and Carletto are with the International Food Policy Research Institute. Munguia is with the Honduran agency Programa de Asignación Familiar. Wodon is with the Poverty Group of the Latin America Region at the World Bank. The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the organizations for which they work.