Ethiopia has seen many changes since 2016, which until now, has been the reference year for data about the level and pattern of poverty in the country. The narrative around poverty was that years of high growth resulted in a significant reduction in poverty, but by less than expected because growth was uneven between rural and urban areas which received most of the gains from growth and there was a slow shift of labor from agriculture into the fast-growing segments of the economy. Since 2016, GDP per capita growth has decelerated - to 4.6 percent during 2016-2022 compared to nearly 7.4 percent during 2010-2016 - not least because of multiple crises, including a global pandemic, droughts, locust infestation, conflict, and market shocks. This Poverty and Equity Assessment (PEA) updates the understanding of poverty and inequality in the country, using new data collected from 2021. This data was collected amidst security concerns, which posed challenges during the data collection process. Despite these challenges, data quality checks have verified that the collected information is reliable and representative of the country, excluding areas that were inaccessible, such as Tigray. The PEA updates statistics on poverty rates, inequality, the poverty profile, and identifies the drivers of these trends (Part 1). It provides an in-depth understanding of the key drivers of poverty in the country (Part 2) and charts the course for reducing poverty in the years to come (Part 3). Below are some high-level messages drawn from the analysis presented in the seven chapters of the report. Additional details are accessible in background papers accompanying the report.

As of May 2023, 22.8 million people in Ethiopia lacked sufficient food for consumption. The number of inhabitants in the food insecurity situation remained stable compared to the previous month. Furthermore, the prevalence of food insecurity in Ethiopia was measured at 22.25 percent of the population in May 2023. Overall, the number of people with insufficient food consumption in the country fluctuated, peaking at 26.3 percent million individuals in April 2022.

In 2025, nearly 11.7 percent of the world population in extreme poverty, with the poverty threshold at 2.15 U.S. dollars a day, lived in Nigeria. Moreover, the Democratic Republic of the Congo accounted for around 11.7 percent of the global population in extreme poverty. Other African nations with a large poor population were Tanzania, Mozambique, and Madagascar. Poverty levels remain high despite the forecast decline Poverty is a widespread issue across Africa. Around 429 million people on the continent were living below the extreme poverty line of 2.15 U.S. dollars a day in 2024. Since the continent had approximately 1.4 billion inhabitants, roughly a third of Africa’s population was in extreme poverty that year. Mozambique, Malawi, Central African Republic, and Niger had Africa’s highest extreme poverty rates based on the 2.15 U.S. dollars per day extreme poverty indicator (updated from 1.90 U.S. dollars in September 2022). Although the levels of poverty on the continent are forecast to decrease in the coming years, Africa will remain the poorest region compared to the rest of the world. Prevalence of poverty and malnutrition across Africa Multiple factors are linked to increased poverty. Regions with critical situations of employment, education, health, nutrition, war, and conflict usually have larger poor populations. Consequently, poverty tends to be more prevalent in least-developed and developing countries worldwide. For similar reasons, rural households also face higher poverty levels. In 2024, the extreme poverty rate in Africa stood at around 45 percent among the rural population, compared to seven percent in urban areas. Together with poverty, malnutrition is also widespread in Africa. Limited access to food leads to low health conditions, increasing the poverty risk. At the same time, poverty can determine inadequate nutrition. Almost 38.3 percent of the global undernourished population lived in Africa in 2022.

Abstract

The Ethiopia Socioeconomic Panel Survey (ESPS) is a collaborative project between the Ethiopian Statistical Service (ESS) and the World Bank Living Standards Measurement Study-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) team. The objective of the LSMS-ISA is to collect multi-topic, household-level panel data with a special focus on improving agriculture statistics and generating a clearer understanding of the link between agriculture and other sectors of the economy. The project also aims to build capacity, share knowledge across countries, and improve survey methodologies and technology. ESPS is a long-term project to collect panel data. The project responds to the data needs of the country, given the dependence of a high percentage of households on agriculture activities in the country. The ESPS collects information on household agricultural activities along with other information on the households like human capital, other economic activities, and access to services and resources. The ability to follow the same households over time makes the ESPS a new and powerful tool for studying and understanding the role of agriculture in household welfare over time as it allows analyses of how households add to their human and physical capital, how education affects earnings, and the role of government policies and programs on poverty, inter alia. The ESPS is the first-panel survey to be carried out by the Ethiopian Statistical Service that links a multi-topic household questionnaire with detailed data on agriculture.

Geographic coverage

National Regional Urban and Rural

Analysis unit

• Household
• Individual
• Community

Universe

The survey covered all de jure households excluding prisons, hospitals, military barracks, and school dormitories.

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

The sampling frame for the second phase ESPS panel survey is based on the updated 2018 pre-census cartographic database of enumeration areas by the Ethiopian Statistical Service (ESS). The sample is a two-stage stratified probability sample. The ESPS EAs in rural areas are the subsample of the AgSS EA sample. That means the first stage of sampling in the rural areas entailed selecting enumeration areas (i.e., the primary sampling units) using simple random sampling (SRS) from the sample of the 2018 AgSS enumeration areas (EAs). The first stage of sampling for urban areas is selecting EAs directly from the urban frame of EAs within each region using systematic PPS. This is designed to automatically result in a proportional allocation of the urban sample by zone within each region. Following the selection of sample EAs, they are allocated by urban rural strata using power allocation which is happened to be closer to proportional allocation.

The second stage of sampling is the selection of households to be surveyed in each sampled EA using systematic random sampling. From the rural EAs, 10 agricultural households are selected as a subsample of the households selected for the AgSS, and 2 non-agricultural households are selected from the non-agriculture households list in that specific EA. The non-agriculture household selection follows the same sampling method i.e., systematic random sampling. One important issue to note in ESPS sampling is that the total number of agriculture households per EA remains at 10 even though there are less than 2 or no non-agriculture households are listed and sampled in that EA. For urban areas, a total of 15 households are selected per EA regardless of the households’ economic activity. The households are selected using systematic random sampling from the total households listed in that specific EA.

The ESPS-5 kept all the ESPS-4 samples except for those in the Tigray region and a few other places. A more detailed description of the sample design is provided in Section 3 of the Basic Information Document provided under the Related Materials tab.

Mode of data collection

Computer Assisted Personal Interview [capi]

Research instrument

The ESPS-5 survey consisted of four questionnaires (household, community, post-planting, and post-harvest questionnaires), similar to those used in previous waves but revised based on the results of those waves and on the need for new data they revealed. The following new topics are included in ESPS-5:

a. Dietary Quality: This module collected information on the household’s consumption of specified food items.

b. Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES): In this round the survey has implemented FIES. The scale is based on the eight food insecurity experience questions on the Food Insecurity Experience Scale | Voices of the Hungry | Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (fao.org).

c. Basic Agriculture Information: This module is designed to collect minimal agriculture information from households. It is primarily for urban households. However, it was also used for a few rural households where it was not possible to implement the full agriculture module due to security reasons and administered for urban households. It asked whether they had undertaken any agricultural activity, such as crop farming and tending livestock) in the last 12 months. For crop farming, the questions were on land tenure, crop type, input use, and production. For livestock there were also questions on their size and type, livestock products, and income from sales of livestock or livestock products.

d. Climate Risk Perception: This module was intended to elicit both rural and urban households perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes about different climate-related risks. It also asked where and how households were obtaining information on climate and weather-related events.

e. Agriculture Mechanization and Video-Based Agricultural Extension: The rural area community questionnaire covered these areas rural areas. On mechanization the questions related to the penetration, availability and accessibility of agricultural machinery. Communities were also asked if they had received video-based extension services.

Cleaning operations

Final data cleaning was carried out on all data files. Only errors that could be clearly and confidently fixed by the team were corrected; errors that had no clear fix were left in the datasets. Cleaning methods for these errors are left up to the data user.

Response rate

ESPS-5 planned to interview 7,527 households from 565 enumeration areas (EAs) (Rural 316 EAs and Urban 249 EAs). However, due to the security situation in northern Ethiopia and to a lesser extent in the western part of the country, only a total of 4999 households from 438 EAs were interviewed for both the agriculture and household modules. The security situation in northern parts of Ethiopia meant that, in Tigray, ESPS-5 did not cover any of the EAs and households previously sampled. In Afar, while 275 households in 44 EAs had been covered by both the ESPS-4 agriculture and household modules, in ESPS-5 only 252 households in 22 EAs were covered by both modules. During the fifth wave, security was also a problem in both the Amhara and Oromia regions, so there was a comparable reduction in the number of households and EAs covered there.

More detailed information is available in the BID.

Abstract

Ethiopia hosts over 900,000 refugees, making it the sixth-largest refugee population in the world and the second-largest in Sub-Saharan Africa. Most refugees are from South Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia, and Sudan, which have experienced some combination of long-running domestic conflict, border disputes with Ethiopia, recurrent drought, and other climate shocks. The national household survey of Ethiopia – Household Welfare Statistics Survey (HoWStat) – currently excludes displaced populations from its sample of households. We have little information on their socioeconomic outcomes and poverty levels compared to Ethiopians. The Socio-Economic Survey of Refugees (SESRE) aims at solving two existing problems: (i) gaps in data on the socioeconomic dimensions of refugees and (ii) gaps in analytical studies presenting the socioeconomic outcomes of refugees and hosts. Moreover, the SESRE serves as a feasibility study to include refugees in HoWStat’s data collection effort, including sampling, data collection, and analysis.

Geographic coverage

The SESRE covers all current major refugee camps: Eritreans, South Sudanese, and Somalis, as well as the out-of-camp refugees in Addis Ababa. In addition, the survey covers the respective host communities around the camps, including the host communities of Addis Ababa. Due to the conflict in the Tigray region of Ethiopia between 2020 and 2022, Eritrean refugees living in camps in Tigray could not be included in this survey.

Analysis unit

Household and individual

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

The sample for this survey was 3,456 households from eight domains, with data was collected from 3,452 households. There are three domains for the three largest in-camp refugee groups—Eritreans, Somalis, and South Sudanese—three for host communities of these major refugee groups, and one for refugees and one for host communities in Addis Ababa. In all categories, a stratified, two-stage cluster sample design technique was used to select EAs and 12 households per EA, whereby the EAs were considered a Primary Sampling Unit and the households as the Secondary Sampling Unit. The SESRE is designed to estimate demographic, socioeconomic, welfare, and refugee-specific indicators of the eight domains.

Mode of data collection

Face-to-face [f2f]

Research instrument

The questionnaire contains modules on: Sociodemographic, Jobs and Livelihood, Welfare and Equity, Aspirations, Social Cohesion, and Markets and Opportunities. The questionnaire is available for download.

Abstract

The Ethiopia Socioeconomic Survey (ESS) is a collaborative project between the Central Statistics Agency of Ethiopia (CSA) and the World Bank Living Standards Measurement Study-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) team. The objective of the LSMS-ISA is to collect multi-topic, household-level panel data with a special focus on improving agriculture statistics and generating a clearer understanding of the link between agriculture and other sectors of the economy. The project also aims to build capacity, share knowledge across countries, and improve survey methodologies and technology.

ESS is a long-term project to collect panel data. The project responds to the data needs of the country, given the dependence of a high percentage of households in agriculture activities in the country. The ESS collects information on household agricultural activities along with other information on the households like human capital, other economic activities, access to services and resources. The ability to follow the same households over time makes the ESS a new and powerful tool for studying and understanding the role of agriculture in household welfare over time as it allows analyses of how households add to their human and physical capital, how education affects earnings, and the role of government policies and programs on poverty, inter alia. The ESS is the first panel survey to be carried out by the CSA that links a multi-topic household questionnaire with detailed data on agriculture.

Geographic coverage

National Regional Urban and Rural

Analysis unit

• Household
• Individual
• Community

Universe

The survey covered all de jure households excluding prisons, hospitals, military barracks, and school dormitories.

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

The sampling frame for the new ESS4 is based on the updated 2018 pre-census cartographic database of enumeration areas by CSA. The ESS4 sample is a two-stage stratified probability sample. The ESS4 EAs in rural areas are the subsample of the AgSS EA sample. That means, the first stage of sampling in the rural areas entailed selecting enumeration areas (i.e. the primary sampling units) using simple random sampling (SRS) from the sample of the 2018 AgSS enumeration areas (EAs). The first stage of sampling for urban areas is selecting EAs directly from the urban frame of EAs within each region using systematically with PPS. This is designed in way that automatically results in a proportional allocation of the urban sample by zone within each region. Following the selection of sample EAs, they are allocated by urban rural strata using power allocation which is happened to be closer to proportional allocation.

The second stage of sampling for the ESS4 is the selection of households to be surveyed in each sampled EA using systematic random sampling. From the rural EAs, 10 agricultural households are selected as a subsample of the households selected for the AgSS and 2 non-agricultural households are selected from the non-agriculture households list in that specific EA. The non-agriculture household selection follows the same sampling method i.e. systematic random sampling. One important issue to note in ESS4 sampling is that the total number of agriculture households per EA remains 10 even though there are less than 2 or no non-agriculture households are listed and sampled in that EA.

For urban areas, a total of 15 households are selected per EA regardless of the households’ economic activity. The households are selected using systematic random sampling from the total households listed in that specific EA. Table 3.2 presents the distribution of sample households for ESS4 by region, urban and rural stratum. A total of 7527 households are sampled for ESS4 based on the above sampling strategy.

Mode of data collection

Computer Assisted Personal Interview [capi]

Research instrument

The survey consisted of five questionnaires, similar with the questionnaires used during the previous rounds with revisions based on the results of the previous rounds as well as on identified areas of need for new data.

The household questionnaire was administered to all households in the sample; multiple modules in the household questionnaire were administered per eligible household members in the sample.

The community questionnaire was administered to a group of community members to collect information on the socio-economic indicators of the enumeration areas where the sample households reside.

The three agriculture questionnaires consisting of a post-planting agriculture questionnaire, post-harvest agriculture questionnaire and livestock questionnaire were administered to all household members (agriculture holders) who are engaged in agriculture activities. A holder is a person who exercises management control over the operations of the agricultural holdings and makes the major decisions regarding the utilization of the available resources. S/he has technical and economic responsibility for the holding. S/he may operate the holding directly as an owner or as a manager. Hence it is possible to have more than one holder in single sampled households. As a result we have administered more than one agriculture questionnaire in a single sampled household if the household has more than one holder.

Household questionnaire: The household questionnaire provides information on education; health (including anthropometric measurement for children); labor and time use; financial inclusion; assets ownership and user right; food and non-food expenditure; household nonfarm activities and entrepreneurship; food security and shocks; safety nets; housing conditions; physical and financial assets; credit; tax and transfer; and other sources of household income. Household location is geo-referenced in order to be able to later link the ESS data to other available geographic data sets (See Appendix 1 for discussion of the geo-data provided with the ESS).

Community questionnaire: The community questionnaire solicits information on infrastructure; community organizations; resource management; changes in the community; key events; community needs, actions and achievements; and local retail price information.

Agriculture questionnaire: The post-planting and post-harvest agriculture questionnaires focus on crop farming activities and solicit information on land ownership and use; land use and agriculture income tax; farm labor; inputs use; GPS land area measurement and coordinates of household fields; agriculture capital; irrigation; and crop harvest and utilization. The livestock questionnaire collects information on animal holdings and costs; and production, cost and sales of livestock by products.

Cleaning operations

Final data cleaning was carried out on all data files. Only errors that could be clearly and confidently fixed by the team were corrected; errors that had no clear fix were left in the datasets. Cleaning methods for these errors are left up to the data user.

Response rate

ESS4 planned to interview 7,527 households from 565 enumeration areas (EAs) (Rural 316 EAs and Urban 249 EAs). A total of 6770 households from 535 EAs were interviewed for both the agriculture and household modules. The household module was not implemented in 30 EAs due to security reasons (See the Basic Information Document for additional information on survey implementation).

Financial hardship of healthcare among households in Debre Tabor town, Ethiopia, 2022.

Households coping mechanism for healthcare cost among households in Debre Tabor town, Ethiopia, 2022.

Health and health related characteristics of households, Debre Tabor town, Ethiopia, 2022.

Annual total expenditure of households, Debre Tabor town, Ethiopia, 2022.

Sociodemographic and socioeconomic characteristics of households, Debre Tabor town, Ethiopia, 2022.

Maternal characteristics result of respondents in 2016 EDHS, Ethiopia.

Socio-demographic and economic characteristics of respondents in 2016 EDHS, Ethiopia (weighted N = 4690).

Multi-variable multilevel binary logistic regression analysis result of both community and individual level factors associated with utilization of deworming medication in pregnant mothers in Ethiopia, EDHS 2016.