Using panel data from the Ethiopian Productive Safety Net Program, this paper explores the degree to which this social protection programme has been successful in protecting its beneficiaries against the various shocks that have affected the Horn of Africa in the recent past. The analysis suggests that although the PSNP has managed to improve households’ food security and wellbeing, the positive effects of the programme are not robust enough to shield recipients completely against the impacts of severe shocks.
The two panel surveys used in this research were part of the ‘Trends in Transfers’ study that was implemented in 2006 and 2008 in eight woredas in four regions in Ethiopia where the PSNP is operational. The survey was administered through a face-to-face questionnaire to 960 PSNP beneficiary and non-beneficiary households chosen through a stratified random sampling procedure. The household questionnaire included modules covering household demographics; livelihood activities and income; ownership of and access to land; crop farming; saving, lending and borrowing; formal and informal transfers; and asset inventory. In addition, specific questions were included on food security (food shortage months, meals per day); coping strategies over the past year (rationing, asset sales, borrowing, etc.); asset protection and asset building; and a self-assessment measure of how well the household felt it had been doing over the last 12 months.
Key Findings:
- This study’s findings were consistent with those of other recent studies, which question the widely held view that the poorest households are usually more affected by shocks. The only types of shock that follow the more widely accepted pattern are illness and death for which the poorest households systematically reported higher prevalence than the richest households. For the other shocks, the pattern is not clear (in particular for drought, which is the most frequent shock), and as mentioned above, the pattern is reversed for flood and loss of livestock. To some extent, these results reinforce the importance of recognising the difference between poverty and vulnerability, and the fact that the wealthier households in a poor community may be as vulnerable, or possibly even more vulnerable than the poor, as they have more to lose than the asset-less poor.
- The findings highlight the predominance of drought and illness as two major (respectively covariant and idiosyncratic) shocks impacting severely food security and more broadly the general wellbeing of households in Ethiopia. The analysis shows the almost systematic use of specific strategies (in particular reduction of food consumption) by households as buffering mechanisms in the face of shocks
- The analysis also reveals that asset building strategies seem to be more strongly linked to income than to asset wealth, as if people were drawing more on cash than on pre-existing assets to engage in these strategies.
- The food security index of PSNP recipients is lower for households affected by drought, illness, loss of crop, high price and idiosyncratic shocks, and statistically lower for drought, illness and idiosyncratic shocks. Similarly, well-being indexes are systematically lower for households that were affected by drought, illness, loss of crop and high price, and statistically lower for drought and high price shocks. These results suggest that although PSNP does contribute to protecting households against shocks, the programme does not provide complete protection against the impacts of these shocks.
