Household Trajectories in Rural Ethiopia: What Can a Mixed Method Approach Tell Us About the Impact of Poverty on Children?

Abstract

The paper explores the dynamics of child and household poverty in rural Ethiopia using three rounds of household survey and qualitative data collected by Young Lives, a longitudinal study of child poverty. It uses a mixed-method taxonomy of poverty to classify children and their households into four groups, analyse their movements in and out of poverty, and explore the underlying factors. The final section of the paper uses qualitative case studies to explore child welfare dynamics in more detail, looking at the interplay between the progress or decline of households and that of children within those households. It concludes that while the percentage of poor households within this sample reduced from 50 to 20 % between rounds 1 and 3 (2002–2009), these changes were not always beneficial to children and did not reach nearly 1 in 10 households classified as ultra-poor. A deepened understanding of those changes, employing both quantitative and qualitative methods, is deemed crucial in post-2015 millennium development goal discussions.