Need-Based Transfers Enhance Resilience to Shocks: An Agent-Based Model of a Maasai Risk-Pooling System

Abstract Maasai and other Maa-speaking pastoralists in Kenya and Tanzania have a risk-pooling system that they refer to by their word for the umbilical cord ( osotua ). Gifts from one osotua partner to another are contingent on the recipient’s need and do not create any debt. We refer to such gifts as need-based transfers. Maa-speakers also have a system of debt-based transfers ( esile ) in which gifts must be repaid. We designed an agent-based model to compare the impacts on herd survival of need-based and debt-based transfers on networks of varying topologies and sizes and with different degrees of temporal correlation of shocks felt by the agents. We found that the use of need-based rather than debt-based transfers, greater network modularity, greater network size, and decreased correlation among shocks were associated with increased rates of survival.