Publication: A Multi-Country Analysis of Multidimensional Poverty in Contexts of Forced Displacement
Loading...
Published
2021-10
ISSN
Date
2021-11-04
Author(s)
Admasu, Yeshwas
Alkire, Sabina
Ekhator-Mobayode, Uche Eseosa
Kovesdi, Fanni
Scharlin-Pettee, Sophie
Editor(s)
Abstract
Despite the many simultaneous deprivations faced by forcibly displaced communities, such as food insecurity, inadequate housing, or lack of access to education, there is little research on the level and composition of multidimensional poverty among them, and how it might differ from that of host communities. Relying on household survey data from selected areas of Ethiopia, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan, this paper proposes a Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) that captures the overlapping deprivations experienced by poor individuals in contexts of displacement. Using the MPI, the paper presents multi-country descriptive analysis to explore the relationships between multidimensional poverty, displacement status, and gender of the household head. The results reveal significant differences across displaced and host communities in all countries except Nigeria. In Ethiopia, South Sudan, and Sudan, female-headed households have higher MPIs, while in Somalia, those living in male-headed households are more likely to be identified as multidimensionally poor. Lastly, the paper examines mismatches and overlaps in the identification of the poor by the MPI and the $1.90/day poverty line, confirming the need for complementary measures when assessing deprivations among people in contexts of displacement.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Admasu, Yeshwas; Alkire, Sabina; Ekhator-Mobayode, Uche Eseosa; Kovesdi, Fanni; Santamaria, Julieth; Scharlin-Pettee, Sophie. 2021. A Multi-Country Analysis of Multidimensional Poverty in Contexts of Forced Displacement. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 9826. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36477 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Publication The Macroeconomic Implications of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Options(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-29)Estimating the macroeconomic implications of climate change impacts and adaptation options is a topic of intense research. This paper presents a framework in the World Bank's macrostructural model to assess climate-related damages. This approach has been used in many Country Climate and Development Reports, a World Bank diagnostic that identifies priorities to ensure continued development in spite of climate change and climate policy objectives. The methodology captures a set of impact channels through which climate change affects the economy by (1) connecting a set of biophysical models to the macroeconomic model and (2) exploring a set of development and climate scenarios. The paper summarizes the results for five countries, highlighting the sources and magnitudes of their vulnerability --- with estimated gross domestic product losses in 2050 exceeding 10 percent of gross domestic product in some countries and scenarios, although only a small set of impact channels is included. The paper also presents estimates of the macroeconomic gains from sector-level adaptation interventions, considering their upfront costs and avoided climate impacts and finding significant net gross domestic product gains from adaptation opportunities identified in the Country Climate and Development Reports. Finally, the paper discusses the limits of current modeling approaches, and their complementarity with empirical approaches based on historical data series. The integrated modeling approach proposed in this paper can inform policymakers as they make proactive decisions on climate change adaptation and resilience.Publication South Africa’s Fragmented Cities: The Unequal Burden of Labor Market Frictions(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-08)Using high-resolution administrative, census, and satellite data, this paper shows that South African cities are characterized by spatial mismatches between where people live and where jobs are located, relative to 20 global peers. Areas within 5 kilometers of commercial centers have 9,300 fewer residents per square kilometer than expected, which is 60 percent below the global median. Poor, dense neighborhoods are most affected. In Johannesburg, a 10-percentile increase in distance from the nearest business hub corresponds to a 3.7-percentile drop in asset wealth (a proxy of household wellbeing) and 4.9-percentile drop in employment. In Cape Town, the declines are 4.0 and 3.7 percentiles, respectively. Employment is 87 percent lower in the poorest decile than the richest in Johannesburg and 61 percent lower in Cape Town. These findings suggest that South Africa’s spatial organization of people and economic activity constrains agglomeration and reinforces inequality. This methodology provides a scalable and standardized data-driven framework to analyze spatial accessibility and agglomeration frictions in complex, data-constrained urban systems.Publication The Evolution of Local Participatory Democracy in Nepal(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-11-05)Nepal is, according to its constitution, among the world’s most decentralized countries, with a long and complex tradition of local-level public participation. This paper traces the evolution of Nepal’s modern participatory institutions, examining the extent to which they are “induced” by external interventions versus being “organically” rooted in indigenous practices. The paper identifies three broad phases: an initial focus on participation in project implementation; a subsequent phase that expanded citizen engagement; and a third phase of citizen empowerment, culminating in the 2015 federal constitution, which granted unprecedented local autonomy. The analysis yields five key findings. First, over the past 50 years, successive reforms have progressively expanded opportunities for citizens to influence local decision-making. Second, these reforms have integrated traditional participatory mechanisms into formal institutions of local government. Third, although central-level initiatives exist, most participatory platforms continue to operate at the local level. Fourth, the federal constitution has created a new landscape of local democracy, embedding autonomy and accountability. Fifth, although they are still valued in many ethnic and territorial communities, traditional participatory practices are gradually disappearing. The paper concludes by offering policy recommendations to help donor agencies and governments strengthen Nepal’s democratic trajectory. It argues that effective interventions should build on Nepal’s deep participatory traditions while recognizing the constitutional reality of far-reaching local autonomy.Publication Institutional Capacity for Policy Implementation: An Analytical Framework(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-07)State capacity is an important prerequisite for policy implementation, yet at the country level it is difficult to measure, assess, and reform. This paper proposes a focus on institutional capacity: the ability of public institutions to implement the specific policy mandates for which they are responsible. Based on a review of existing literature, the paper defines the different dimensions that compose institutional capacity and groups them into two cross-cutting categories: organizational dimensions (personnel, financial resources, information systems, and management practices) and governance dimensions (transparency, independence, and accountability). The paper proposes measures for organizational and governance dimensions using existing data, shows intra-institutional variation of these measures within countries, and discusses how new data could be collected for better measurement of these concepts. Finally, the paper illustrates how the framework can be used to diagnose the sources of common problems related to weak policy implementation.Publication Closing the Gender Gap in Entrepreneurship: Overcoming Challenges in Law and Practice for Female Entrepreneurs(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-07)Despite significant strides toward gender equality, women around the world continue to encounter systemic obstacles that hinder their entrepreneurial success. This paper systematically reviews the literature on the barriers female entrepreneurs face and the solutions proposed to overcome these challenges. It discusses institutional factors, financial factors, human capital factors, and social and cultural factors. The literature overview is complemented by a series of stylized facts that illustrate how overcoming some of these existing barriers is correlated with improved women’s entrepreneurship and female labor force participation, drawing on the World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law database as well as the World Bank’s Enterprise Surveys. The findings underscore the need for creating an enabling environment where women can thrive as entrepreneurs.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Multidimensional Poverty, Gender, and Forced Displacement(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-10)This paper examines multidimensional poverty among forcibly displaced populations, using a gendered lens. Although past studies have explored poverty in forcibly displaced contexts, and others have looked at the relationship between multidimensional poverty and gender, none has brought together these three issues—multidimensional poverty, forcibly displaced persons, and gender. A tailored measure of multidimensional poverty is developed and applied for refugees and internally displaced populations in five Sub-Saharan African settings substantially affected by forced displacement—Ethiopia, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan. The gendered analysis builds on prior analysis of the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) by examining individual-level deprivations of women and men in forcibly displaced households and host communities, as well as synthesizing intrahousehold dynamics of multidimensional poverty in forcibly displaced communities. The results provide insights into the educational constraints of boys and girls living in forcibly displaced households, the labor market inequalities experienced by men and women in these communities, and their differential access to legal documentation and employment as part and parcel of the forced displacement experience.Publication Effect of Armed Conflict on Intimate Partner Violence(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-03)Intimate partner violence is the most common form of violence against women in conflict and non-conflict settings, but in conflict settings it often receives less attention than other forms of gender-based violence, such as conflict-related sexual violence. Using data from the 2008 and 2013 Domestic Violence module of the Nigerian Demographic and Health Survey spatially linked to the Boko Haram actor file of the Armed Conflict Location and Events Database, this paper employs a kernel-based difference-in-difference model to examine the effect of the Boko Haram insurgency on women's experience of physical and sexual intimate partner violence. It also examines the effect of the Boko Haram insurgency on women's experience of controlling behavior from a husband or partner, women's autonomy in household decision making, and their control over their own earnings. The paper finds that the Boko Haram insurgency is associated with slower progress toward preventing and eliminating women's experiences of physical and sexual intimate partner violence. Controlling behaviors from husbands/partners and reductions in women's autonomy in household decision making are heightened in locations that are impacted by the Boko Haram insurgency, indicating that the Boko Haram insurgency adversely affects women's agency and exacerbates behaviors that are often precursors to intimate partner violence.Publication Intimate Partner Violence and Household Decision Making Autonomy(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-10)Rates of intimate partner violence vary widely across regions. Evidence suggests that some of this variation can be attributed to exposure to armed conflict. This study exploits variation in the timing and location of conflict events related to the war in Mali to examine the effect of conflict on intimate partner violence and some women’s empowerment outcomes. The study used data from the Demographic and Health Survey spatially linked to conflict data from the Armed Conflict Location and Events Database. Wartime conflict increases the prevalence of women’s experiences of intimate partner violence. It also increases women’s household decision making autonomy but decreases women’s ability to decide how their earnings are deployed. The results imply that to be successful, programs to mitigate these adverse effects of conflict on women need to be context specific and rely on data-driven evidence from situations of conflict whenever possible. Policy makers are called to design programs that address harmful gender norms and intimate partner violence at the individual/household and community levels, especially for women residing in areas with high-intensity conflict. Measurement of women’s empowerment should consistently include several domains of women’s lives to gauge progress in voice and agency, financial autonomy, and violence reduction.Publication Measuring Poverty in Forced Displacement Contexts(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-02)Poverty measurement among forcibly displaced populations, including refugees and internally displaced persons, has been, for long, neglected by the economics profession and by poverty specialists working across the social sciences. This has changed since the beginning of the Syrian conflict in 2011 and the peak of the European migration crisis in 2015. This paper reviews the evolution, current status, and future prospects of the poverty measurement literature on forcibly displaced populations; discusses the main data and measurement challenges associated with this type of population; illustrates selected empirical findings that have emerged from the recent literature; and provides an overview of the substantial effort that humanitarian and development organizations are currently undertaking to close this historical gap in poverty measurement.Publication Microdata Collection and Openness in the Middle East and North Africa(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-12)This paper uses a “mystery client” approach and visits the websites of national statistical offices and international microdata libraries to assess whether foundational microdata sets for countries in the Middle East and North Africa region are collected, up to date, and made available to researchers. The focus is on population and economic censuses, price data and consumption, labor, health, and establishment surveys. Following the exercise, a new microdata access indicator that measures the degree of opennes of microdata and the ease with which microdata users can understand and navigate the websites of national statistical offices is presented. The results show that about half of the expected core data sets are being collected and that only a fraction is made available publicly. As a consequence, many summary statistics, including national accounts and welfare estimates, are outdated and of limited relevance to decision makers. Additional investments in microdata collection and publication of the data once collected are strongly advised. National statistical offices in the region should make considerable improvements to the outlook of their websites to make them more user friendly. Specifically, microdata libraries and updated survey calendars should be a standard feature of the websites to ensure easy access to available microdata.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Planting Roots in Shifting Soil: Building Social Protection and Labor Systems in Fragile, Conflict, and Violence-Affected Settings(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-11-05)To guide policy and operational engagement in these complex contexts, this Approach Paper provides a structured framework for supporting social protection and labor systems and policies in FCV settings. The framework aims to support Task Teams and social protection practitioners in navigating diverse FCV situations through a practical, context-sensitive approach grounded in a deep understanding of each setting’s specific risks, constraints, and opportunities. The framework articulates three high-level objectives of social protection and labor support in FCV contexts: (i) protect and support the accumulation of human capital; (ii) enable people and institutions to build resilience and cope with FCV-related impacts; and (iii) lay the foundations for recovery and transition out of fragility and conflict. To translate these objectives into practice, the Paper introduces a pathway-based framework that organizes FCV contexts by four parameters: (i) the presence of active conflict, (ii) the feasibility of direct government engagement, (iii) the government’s territorial access, and (iv) the maturity of national Social Protection and Labor systems. These factors shape the engagement model, the actors involved, and how support is sequenced and scaled. Based on this framework, eight resulting pathways are identified, each representing a tailored approach to engagement, and illustrated through real-world case studies to support practical implementation.Publication World Development Report 2023: Migrants, Refugees, and Societies(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2023-04-25)Migration is a development challenge. About 184 million people—2.3 percent of the world’s population—live outside of their country of nationality. Almost half of them are in low- and middle-income countries. But what lies ahead? As the world struggles to cope with global economic imbalances, diverging demographic trends, and climate change, migration will become a necessity in the decades to come for countries at all levels of income. If managed well, migration can be a force for prosperity and can help achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. World Development Report 2023 proposes an innovative approach to maximize the development impacts of cross-border movements on both destination and origin countries and on migrants and refugees themselves. The framework it offers, drawn from labor economics and international law, rests on a “Match and Motive Matrix” that focuses on two factors: how closely migrants’ skills and attributes match the needs of destination countries and what motives underlie their movements. This approach enables policy makers to distinguish between different types of movements and to design migration policies for each. International cooperation will be critical to the effective management of migration.Publication Making Refugee Self-Reliance Work: From Aid to Employment in Sub-Saharan Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-09)"Making Refugee Self-Reliance Work: From Aid to Employment in Sub-Saharan Africa" advocates for the enhancement of refugee self-reliance as a strategic, humane, development approach to refugee assistance. Facilitating refugees’ capacity to support themselves through gainful work not only upholds their dignity and autonomy but also offers socioeconomic benefits to host communities by unlocking opportunities for shared investment and development. The report demonstrates how refugee self-reliance in Sub-Saharan Africa remains elusive and identifies various reasons why this is the case: encampment limits the scope for self-reliance; restrictions on refugees’ right to work hinder self-sufficiency; small allocations of infertile land make even subsistence farming impossible; aid delivery in specific areas contributes to settlement patterns in which skills and economic opportunities do not match; economic development in remote, resource-scarce regions is unsustainable; and dependence on aid shifts funding priorities from long-term development to unproductive care and maintenance models. To overcome these challenges, the report outlines five areas for policy action: 1. Ending restrictive encampment policies 2. Boosting refugees’ economic participation 3. Supporting host communities 4. Reshaping financing and investment models 5. Investing in preparedness. Success requires committed leadership from host governments, as well as coordinated engagement and sustained support from humanitarian organizations and development partners.Publication A Triple Win(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-06-18)"A Triple Win: Fiscal and Welfare Benefits of Economic Participation by Syrian Refugees in Jordan" is the result of a joint effort by the World Bank and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to explore the welfare of Syrian refugees in Jordan and to review the aid that refugees receive and their participation in the economy. The analysis shows how deprivation among Syrian refugees is elevated, more so for refugees living in host communities. This presents a puzzle because most refugees opt to live outside of the camps, even though they have the option to stay in camps. Why do people voluntarily expose themselves to a higher risk of poverty? The volume finds an answer in the desire of refugees for freedom and autonomy. "A Triple Win" then turns to humanitarian aid that is found important for reducing refugee poverty, but insufficient as poverty levels remain high. After considering the scope for efficiency gains, the conclusion is that at current levels of aid it will not be possible to lift all Syrian refugees out of poverty unless another solution is found. Increasing the financial autonomy of refugees provides the needed solution. Syrian refugees already access Jordan’s labor market, but their access is constrained. Those who work tend to labor in less remunerative jobs, often in the informal sector. Despite this, the incomes earned by refugees exceed aid by a factor of two. The analysis goes on to show that refugee economic participation already reduces the need for aid by US$850 million per year. This reduction could increase if labor market restrictions were eased. The savings that would be generated could then be repurposed. This approach defines the triple win: refugees gain financial autonomy, humanitarian aid is reserved for those most in need, and Jordan receives additional resources to invest in its economic development.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.