Quantifying Vulnerability to Poverty in the Drought-prone Lowlands of Ethiopia

A forward-looking measure of ‘vulnerability to poverty’ is estimated and a concerted effort is made to understand the sources of vulnerability in the drought-prone lowlands of Ethiopia. Using the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey and the Welfare Monitoring Survey of 2015–16, which include additional zones in the Afar and Somali regions increasing the representativeness of the survey in pastoral areas, the analysis reveals that vulnerability is remarkably higher in the drought-prone lowlands than in the other ecological zones, even though differences in poverty rates are modest. The analysis also reveals important distinctions in the sources of vulnerability. In the drought-prone lowlands, (i) the prevalence of both poverty-induced and risk-induced vulnerability is the highest among all the ecological zones and (ii) the importance of vulnerability due to aggregate shocks, such as droughts, relative to vulnerability due to idiosyncratic shocks is higher than in the other ecological zones. These findings attest to the unique nature of the drought-prone lowlands in comparison to the other agroecological zones of Ethiopia and the need for adaptive social protection programmes targeting not only the chronically poor but also the vulnerable.