IJED Articles 
Assessment of Vulnerability to Persistent Deprivation: Evidence from a Peripheral Pastoralist Population in Ethiopia
WASSIE BERHANU
IJED, Vol. 14 No. 2,
108-141 (2021)
This paper examines household vulnerability to poverty among a traditional pastoralist society inhabiting a peripheral dryland environment. It is directed to contribute to the literature by broadly focusing on quantitative assessment of poverty trends and pastoralist vulnerability to poverty in the study area. Poverty is found to be very persistent, and vulnerability to poverty is considerably high in this peripheral setting. A considerable segment of households that are vulnerable are the non-poor, which implies that the conventional stance of targeting the currently poor alone is not enough. In aggregate, results for this sampled peripheral population generally indicate trends inconsistent with Ethiopia’s reported recent macroeconomic developments of remarkable growth performance and falling poverty rates. The prevailing status and trends signify the need for comprehensive long-term program designs that equally embrace both poor and non-poor pastoralists.