Disability lowers living standards and happiness in rural Ethiopia

People in poor countries are often more vulnerable to becoming disabled than those in rich countries. They can also find it more difficult to adapt to living with a disability. In rural Ethiopia, how does disability affect people’s wealth and happiness?

Research from Oxford University and the University of East Anglia, both in the UK, examines the effects of disability on people in poor countries. It draws on a 2004 survey of households in rural Ethiopia, which gathered information on different forms of disability (problems with hearing, speaking, sight, loss of limbs and paralysis) and people’s levels of reported life satisfaction or happiness.

Many studies in rich countries have found that people can adapt to any life event including disability. People who become disabled often experience a marked recovery in mental wellbeing, even if there is not a complete return to previous happiness levels. Other studies, however, have shown that adaptation depends on the type of disability and the individual.

In poor countries, the effect of disability on people’s lives is likely to be worse than in rich countries:

• Having a physical impairment makes it difficult to undertake physical work such as farming.
• Poor countries have less money to invest in technologies designed to help disabled people to continue working.
• Social insurance is also usually lacking, meaning people have to rely on friends and family for support.

However, some factors result in poor countries sometimes having a lower proportion of disabled people. Disability tends to increase with age and many people in developing countries do not live long enough to become disabled. Also, once people become disabled they have a much lower life expectancy than they would in a rich country.

The research shows that rates of sensory disability (difficulties with hearing, speaking and sight) in Ethiopia are very high (nearly 11 percent of the population) compared with the USA. However, the research also shows that rates of physical disability are higher in the USA, because of longer life expectancy.

The researchers explore the links between happiness, wealth and disability. They find:

• People’s happiness is strongly linked to how well-off they feel compared with others in the village.
• People living in households with at least one disabled person – whether themselves or another member of the household – are less happy than those living in households without disabled people.
• Evidence to support the idea of adaptation is lacking: people in households that had experienced disability for long periods were not happier than those in households that had experienced it only recently.
• Disability is linked with lower household wealth.
• It is this negative impact on household wealth that links disability with lower levels of happiness.

The findings show that people in rural Ethiopia struggle to adapt to disability, mainly because of the negative effect it has on earnings and wealth. This is likely to be the case in other developing countries where most people rely on physical labour, such as farming, to earn a living.

Source(s):
‘Subjective Wellbeing, Disability and Adaptation: A case Study from Rural Ethiopia’, Centre for the Study of African Economies Working Paper 2008-01, CSAE: Oxford, by Marcel Fafchamps and Bereket Kebede, 2008 (PDF) Full document.

id21 Research Highlight: 2 November 2008

Further Information:
Marcel Fafchamps
Centre for the Study of African Economies
University of Oxford
Department of Economics
Manor Road
Oxford OX1 3UQ, UK

Tel: +44 1865 281446
Fax: +44 1865 281447
Contact the contributor: marcel.fafchamps@economics.ox.ac.uk

Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford, Department of Economics, UK

Bereket Kebede
School of Development Studies
University of East Anglia
Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK

Tel: + 44 1603 593376
Fax: + 44 1603 451999
Contact the contributor: b.kebede@uea.ac.uk

School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK

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'The impact of maternal health on poverty'

'Why are policy responses to the needs of poor people inadequate?'