Publication: Growth, Safety Nets and Poverty: Assessing Progress in Ethiopia from 1996 to 2011
Date
2018-03
ISSN
Published
2018-03
Author(s)
Hill, Ruth Vargas
Tsehaye, Eyasu
Abstract
In the past 10 years, Ethiopia
experienced high and consistent growth, invested in public
goods provision to poor households, and saw impressive gains
in well-being for many households. This paper exploits
variation in sectoral growth and public goods provision
across zones and time, to examine whether poverty reduction
was driven by growth and provision of public goods and what
type of growth -- growth in agriculture, manufacturing, or
services -- was more effective at reducing poverty. The
paper pays particular attention to controlling for other
drivers of poverty reduction and instrumenting growth in a
sector of particular policy focus -- agriculture -- to
identify causal effects. The analysis finds that reductions
in poverty were largest in places where agricultural output
growth has been higher, safety nets have been introduced,
and improvements in market access have been made.
Agricultural output growth caused reductions in poverty of
2.2 percent per year on average post-2005, and 0.1 percent
per year prior to 2005. The government's policy focus
on stimulating productivity gains in smallholder cereal
farmers contributed to this growth, but only when the
weather was good, and prices were high. Access to markets
was essential: agricultural growth reduced poverty in places
close to urban centers, but not in remote parts of the country.
Citation
“Hill, Ruth Vargas; Tsehaye, Eyasu. 2018. Growth, Safety Nets and Poverty: Assessing Progress in Ethiopia from 1996 to 2011. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 8380. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/29560 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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