Multidimensional poverty in Afghanistan: who are the poorest of the poor?

Abstract

Taking a capability approach perspective, our paper aims at advancing our understanding of poverty in Afghanistan, and at identifying the most deprived, including persons with disabilities, in order to address the first Sustainable Development Goal to eradicate poverty in all its forms. We used data from a national survey carried out in Afghanistan in 2005. We calculated one index using two weights structures, the adjusted headcount ratio, part of the multidimensional poverty measures. Following a participatory process, we identified and validated 13 indicators clustered in seven dimensions of poverty, including three usually neglected dimensions. Findings suggest that exploring various domains of deprivation would better inform poverty eradication policies than an approach focused only on income. Our results also demonstrate that nearly all Afghan adults are deprived in at least one dimension and those residing in rural areas, from minority ethnic groups, women, elderly people and persons disabled at birth or of an unknown cause are the poorest of the poor. Efforts to improve well-being must acknowledge these inequalities so that public policies in Afghanistan aiming at alleviating poverty take these disparities into account, when facing a reduction in available resources.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to 5000 Afghan families for responding to our questions. We thank Anouradha Bakhshi, Parul Bakhshi and Ellis Ballard, five anonymous reviewers and the Editor of ODS for helpful comments on earlier versions of the present paper.

Notes

1. These include decomposability, allowing comparison of different subgroups of the population, and dimensional monotonicity, i.e. accounting explicitly for the number of deprivations experienced by those identified as poor.

2. For more details on the survey design, see Trani et al. (2010).

3. To account for the sampling selection process and the relative importance of disability in the Afghan adult population, disabled and non-disabled respondents in the sample have been attributed a relative weight: .956 to non-disabled respondents, and .044 to disabled respondents.

4. (1) Assets are used in common; (2) the dwelling is a shared living space; and (3) indoor pollution using fuel for cooking affects all members of the household.

5. Rarely included domains are: quality of employment; empowerment; physical safety; ability to go out without shame; and psychological and subjective wellbeing. Our paper includes the last three missing dimensions.

6. Data available upon request.

7. In 2011, government expenditure for security was an estimated US$8.6 billion, 24% of the GDP, and will represent an estimated 25% of the annual development effort through 2017 – compared to 3.8% for the US, the country with the largest military budget in the world (Hogg et al., 2013; International Monetary Fund, 2014; Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 2014).