Country context
In recent years Ethiopia has made slow but steady macro-economic progress and significant steps forward in poverty reduction. Child mortality has fallen, access to health improved and great advances in primary education have been made.
However, Ethiopia remains one of the world's poorest countries and ranks among the lowest for most human development indicators. UNDP's Human Poverty Index 2007 places Ethiopia 169 out of 177 countries, with a life expectancy at birth of only 51.8 years. The World Bank (2007) estimates that 77.8% of the population lived on less that US$2 per day, while the Welfare Monitoring Survey Report (2005) put those living in absolute poverty at 37%.
Ethiopia has low rates of urbanisation and the economy is highly dependent on agriculture, which has been volatile for the past twenty years as a result of large variations in rainfall. Almost half the population are hit during drought years. Even during for Ethiopians are normal years with some rainfall, drought-related factors effect more than five million people.
Most people are subsistence farmers and millions of Ethiopians remain dependent on food aid each year. The scarcity of jobs and income opportunities outside farming combined with the unpredictability of emergency food aid leaves people with few resources, resulting in increasing levels of destitution.
The current food crisis threatens to entirely derail any gains made, and many people continue to lack access to quality services, including basic sanitation.
Socio-economic policies
During the decade between 1991 and 2002 the government, led by the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front, introduced major changes following the ousting of the socialist military government. These included implementation of a structural adjustment programme supported by the World Bank and IMF and a new decentralised federal system of government. Investment in basic services and infrastructure increased, although not as much as planned due to the Ethiopia-Eritrea War (1998- 2000) and not to a level which has kept pace with population increase.
Ethiopia is currently half-way through its second five year donor-supported poverty reduction programme which includes 'a massive push to accelerate growth' alongside initiatives to support health, education, infrastructure, food security, women, micro- and small-scale enterprise. Consequently rural poverty in particular has fallen, along with the poverty gap and poverty severity, while real per capita consumption has slowly risen.
Despite this push government spending on social services remains low. Health and education account for only 18% and 5.6% of total budget expenditure respectively, as compared with 17% for defence.
Children's situation
Despite the government’s efforts and the improvements of the past two decades, most of Ethiopia’s children remain very poor and continue to live with ‘not enough’ in terms of household assets, food and goods, basic services and opportunities.
As elsewhere in the world, the negative consequences of economic hardship fall disproportionately on the young. Consequently, more than 12% of Ethiopian children die before they reached the age of 5. Malnutrition is widespread - Ethiopia has one of the highest malnutrition rates in Africa, with 47% of children either stunted in growth or chronically malnourished.
While most children enrol in primary school, few leave with any significant qualifications - still only 38% of Ethiopian adults are literate. Young Lives findings are highlighting serious quality issues as primary education expands: more than one third of 12 year olds in our study could read a simple sentence.
Many children in Ethiopia work both for pay and informally or without pay, generally within the household. The incidence of children working for pay rises sharply with age with almost half of all 5 to 14 year olds are involved in some economic activity in 2001.
Wealth is of course a key determinant of children's well-being but our research into children’s own perceptions of poverty show that other dimensions matter as well – relative poverty often affects children more than absolute poverty, with urban children feeling worse off even though they are objectively better off than their rural counterparts.
Why focus on children
While there have been many studies of poverty in Ethiopia, little is understood about the extent and causes of childhood poverty or how poverty during childhood impacts on later life. Young Lives is examining in more detail than ever before the nature of child poverty, its causes, its effects and the ways it can be addressed. Through a mixture of surveys and in-depth research with children, their caregivers and their communities, we are trying to build as complete a picture as possible of the lives poor children lead. The fact that our work spans 15 years in the lives of these children - covering all ages from birth into young adulthood - means that we are also able to examine how children change over time, whether growing up in rural or urban contexts, poor or not-so-poor areas, in large families or as migrants, and a variety of other factors.
This is helping us to offer a concrete contribution to policy-making in Ethiopia. We can show not only why and how certain children manage to escape the poverty trap while others do not, but also why and how certain policies make a difference while others fail to do so. In a country where widespread poverty remains entrenched, this is an invaluable contribution.
Young Lives in Ethiopia
Click here to go to 4 Young Lives example case studies from Ethiopia.
Young Lives key team members in Ethiopia
Policy Coordinator: Bekele Tefera, Save the Children UK
Principal Investigator: Dr Tassew Woldehanna, Ethiopian Development Research Institute (EDRI)
Lead Qualitative Researcher: Yisak Tafare
