Understanding urban chronic poverty in Ethiopia

While a number of poverty studies have been carried out in Ethiopia, the wider context of the problem is still hard to grasp. A review of studies on urban poverty, both qualitative and quantitative, highlights consistency of findings across studies that have used different methodological approaches and considers some key dimensions of poverty.

This review, by the Chronic Poverty Research Centre, looked at a number of significant recent studies. In Ethiopia, most urban poverty studies are conducted by action-oriented development agents such as non-governmental organisations using participatory approaches. One study argues that these methods are superior if the intention is to understand the dynamics of poverty, but as it is difficult to generate information on income and livelihood sources using participatory urban appraisals, they should be complemented with other methods of generating poverty-relevant data.

The main purpose of the paper is to draw attention to the consistency of findings and their policy implications. To this end, the paper found that:

• With some exceptions most studies measuring poverty show an increase in urban poverty between 1995 and 1997.
• Three key studies also emphasise the government’s lack of essential financial, human resource and organisational capacity to deliver a full range of quality urban services.
• Estimates of prevalence of HIV/AIDS are inconsistent, but most are at least 10.6 percent.
• In education, the more female teachers in a school, the more likely children are to enrol.
• Several studies say that employment creation is one of the most significant methods of fighting long-term poverty, but this does not feature strongly in the new Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper.
• Only one of the studies discussed urban governance, arguing for municipal policies that favoured poor people.

Urban poverty is not sufficiently studied in Ethiopia, particularly chronic urban poverty. This is mainly due to the lack of panel data that tracks the same households across time. The dynamics of urban poverty trends need to be investigated, given the current emergence of such data sets. Other important areas include gender inequality, livelihood insecurity, HIV/AIDS, urban squatter settlements, homelessness, food insecurity and urban governance. Existing evidence from academic institutes, public agencies and private research organisations should be utilised more. Other important research strategies to improve the effectiveness of policymaking include:

• Time allocated for participatory urban appraisal should be sufficient to gather enough relevant information.
• Studies about poverty should approach the issue from different perspectives, including economic, political, anthropological and social.
• Ways in which quantitative and qualitative findings can be combined should be rigorously explored.
• More rigorous work on existing data sets in order to address methodological/empirical issues is critical for an accurate measurement of poverty and its dynamics.
• Better use should be made of existing data sets and findings from studies that have adopted different methodologies.
• Anthropological evidence on a variety of issues, most of which are given little or no attention in household surveys, need to be assembled.

Source(s):
‘Understanding Urban Chronic Poverty: Crossing the Qualitative and Quantitative Divide’, by Abbi M. Kedir, Chronic Poverty Research Centre, CPRC Working Paper 53, 2005 Full document.

Funded by: Department for International Development

id21 Research Highlight: 29 March 2006

Further Information:
Abbi M. Kedir
Department of Economics
University of Leicester
Leicester, LE1 7RH
UK

Tel: +44 (0)116 252 2894
Contact the contributor: ak138@le.ac.uk

University of Leicester, UK

Chronic Poverty Research Centre, IDPM, UK

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'Understanding the causes of chronic poverty in Uganda'

'Emergency policies versus long-term strategies: what brings relief to the destitute in rural Ethiopia?'

'Disentangling chronic and transitory poverty'

'Escaping poverty: can policy reach the chronically poor?'