Title_  Rural Household Vulnerability to Multidimensional Poverty in Ethiopia’s Degu’a Tembien District, Tigray

Author_  Desawi Kiros Gebrekidan, Abate Mekuriaw, John Cameron

Pages_  33-55

Abstract_  This paper investigates household vulnerability to multidimensional poverty in Degu’a Tembien District. Cross-sectional data were collected randomly from 420 households from six rural villages. Vulnerability to multidimensional poverty was estimated using three-step FGLS. Finding shows that, on the one hand, households with greater social capital, financial capital and number of plots tend to be less vulnerable owing to their lower rates of expected multidimensional deprivation. On the other hand, households with better physical capital are found highly vulnerable with lower volatility of expected multidimensional deprivations. The analysis also shows that female-headed households are more vulnerable to future poverty than male-headed households. Household’s who experienced drought, hailed rainfall and pest attack shocks were associated with increased vulnerability. Results also show that households that rely on savings, sale of livestock and formal borrowing of money following a shock were found to be less vulnerable to multidimensional poverty. Overall, 80 percent of households were vulnerable to multidimensional poverty and the probability of experiencing multidimensional poverty in the near future exceeds the current incidence of household multidimensional poverty. This implies the need to focus on reducing household vulnerability through social protection interventions rather than reducing observed multidimensional poverty.

Keywords_ Vulnerability, Multidimensional poverty, Shock, Deprivation, Incidence