How can Afghanistan’s young adults escape poverty amid layered crises?

By: Vidya Diwakar and Orzala Nemat

Photo by Unsplash

One year ago the Taliban took control of Afghanistan. This was preceded by existing multiple crises, including drought, Covid-19, and political insecurity, and all have affected the prospects for young women and men to develop pathways out of poverty.

What happened to Afghanistan? After the widespread  outcry accompanying the shift in power last year, other global challenges have since dominated the international media. Yet, the latest data from our new research shows that 80 percent of Afghan households reported that they faced a much worse economic situation in January/February 2022 than they did in early 2021. In a country where nearly four in five people are under the age of 35, this poses a serious concern for the future of the country and efforts towards zero poverty.

Youth livelihoods caught between multiple crises

When understanding the plight of Afghan youth, it is important to understand how many young adults are impacted by poverty and the striking deprivations and inequality they experience. This represents many Afghans: approximately 4.7 million young adults aged 18-35 years old were living in poverty in 2019/20 and young adults headed around two in five households. Some of this may be affected by what survey data constitutes as a household, especially important to consider in a context like Afghanistan where joint households may be the norm.

Our recent analysis of 2019/20 survey data (before and during the onset of the pandemic), shows that households in poverty headed by youth—perhaps on account of their early stage of life— had a lower average value of assets, livestock, and were less likely to own cultivable farmland, compared to older household heads also living in poverty. They were also significantly more food insecure.

We did find that youth heads of households had more years of schooling and have been more likely to migrate or access salaried employment. However, these options were severely affected during the pandemic, with schools closed, borders restricted, and social protection initiatives that were largely inadequate. The suspension of donor support since the shift in power and cut in salaries for teaching, healthcare and other essential work affected young adults in those jobs.

Erosive forms of coping with crises

From our qualitative interviews in Herat and Kandahar in July 2021, we found that many youth who lost access to credit in the summer of 2021, started working in low-paid agricultural wage labour. Others were driven to mortgage their land. While many would have commonly relied on informal social networks of support, our research found that these were also drying up as entire communities struggled.

The precarity of livelihoods and coping was also felt by women. The survey data points to a slight increase, from a low base, of women in poor households engaging in economic activities in 2020 during Covid-19, compared to pre-pandemic months. Women in areas facing environmental or agricultural shocks (disasters, reduced water, or high food prices) and insecurity also increased their economic activities in 2020, compared to less disaster-prone and more secure areas. This response is potentially a survival need rather than a form of economic empowerment; indeed, past research has pointed to Afghan women intensifying income-generating activities to survive as households sought to cope with drought.

At the same time, many other women  also experienced job loss as our mixed methods data indicates, reflecting additional intersecting sources of vulnerability in a time when sequenced shocks limited their ability to cope in times of crises.

Inclusive youth futures in Afghanistan

So, what can be done to support pathways out of poverty for Afghan youth? Based on our research we make the following recommendations:

  • Responses across the humanitarian-development-peace nexus need to address the context of overlapping crises. There is a good basis for this already in the UN’s 2022 Humanitarian Response Plan. When as many as 97 percent of Afghans could be living in poverty this year, strong coordination within the humanitarian-development-peace nexus is needed to address these crises, especially in ways that can counter historical myopia.

  • Current donor prioritisation for Afghanistan focuses extensively on humanitarian concerns, but this alone is not going to be enough. Instead, multi-sectoral interventions are needed that span the remit of the nexus, with a focus on food security and livelihood support and further supported by strengthened institutions for education, health, and inclusive financing.

  • Youth strategies in Afghanistan should be embedding dialogue with local authorities to develop a shared commitment to youth inclusion that engages with youth as agents of change – where they are able to articulate their interests. This focus should be mainstreamed across projects and programmes in the country.

  • Policy and programmes for young adults in poverty should include developing their asset base and expanding social protection floors, with an urgent focus on addressing the most severe forms of hunger, plus social insurance (e.g. for health and death, business assets, livestock). This would help promote pathways out of poverty while also preventing impoverishment. This could also bolster informal support structures.

  • Support for young women in and near poverty could include providing monthly child allowances, cash benefits for parents affected by day closures, and work-sharing arrangements in response to the care crises.

Parts of this agenda may be unworkable in current circumstances but could benefit from stepwise change through increasingly coordinated efforts by government ministries, NGOs and CSOs, and aid agencies. Bilateral funders would then need to remove or reduce their restrictions on what can be funded to support youth inclusion in Afghanistan.

In all of this, addressing intersecting inequalities – especially on poverty, age and gender will be key to promote inclusive futures of young adults in Afghanistan.

This blog draws on multiple recent research publications:

International Youth Day

To mark international Youth Day 2022 we would like to encourage you to revisit a series of seminars from last year on Youth Employment and Politics in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa region. This includes a seminar chaired by Marjoke Oosterom on Hard work and hazard: Youth and the rural economy in Africa.

Note: This blog was originally published on the IDS website.

Charting pathways to zero poverty amidst complex crises

By: Vidya Diwakar and Andrew Shepherd

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

Can progress on poverty eradication be rescued? TheWorld Bank has recently called for course correction but their fiscal recovery-focused blueprint is only part of the solution given the scale of the challenge. Instead, we need to forge a more ambitious transformative pathway to zero poverty amidst layered crises, including the Covid-19 pandemic, climate change and conflict. We can do this by collectively supporting “dignity for all in practice” through commitments towards “social justice, peace, and the planet”—the theme of this year’s International Day for the Eradication of Poverty (17 October).

Layered crises obstruct focus on recovery

Pre-pandemic there was a slowdown in progress and some retrogression in poverty reduction. This was followed by significant impoverishment during the pandemic, and a turbulent post-pandemic political, military and economic environment marked by new or amplified crises linked to inflation, energy and food scarcities, conflict and climate change.

Not long after the beginning of the pandemic there was much talk of building back (or forward) better which meant greener, more inclusively. Governments optimistically developed recovery plans.

However, political preoccupations have since moved on to other crises. Indeed, the pandemic was barely treated as an emergency with full involvement of key national and international disaster-focused actors. It was instead largely treated as a health crisis, and the response was primarily a health and macro-economic one – important, but completely inadequate to the task of preventing impoverishment. The World Bank’s course correction blueprint and several discussions at its recent Annual Meetings largely builds on this macroeconomic policy focus.

Yet we know that the crisis was so much more, especially for people in and near poverty, who have found their room for manoeuvre and agency additionally constrained.  So where is a dignified recovery for those millions of people already struggling with life and for whom these layered crises form a real setback? And what can be done to accelerate progress towards more peaceful, environmentally sustainable, and inclusive societies amidst layered crises?

Centring ‘social justice, peace and the planet’

First, responding to crises trajectories is essential. Given the multiple nature and duration of the shocks produced during the pandemic alone, it should have been treated as a rapid-onset disaster with slow-onset stressors that continue to prolong its impacts today. Loss of livelihoods, loss of jobs, food insecurity, school closures and displacement of migrants were some of the shocks immediately felt. However, the depressed economies, food and energy price rises, and sustained school dropouts continue to create longer-term, slower-onset conditions likely to drive the intergenerational persistence of poverty.

Second, risk management strategies need to consider the layering of crises. Conflict and climate-induced shocks and stressors add to pressures and affect people’s ability to cope. Even in countries not typically classified as conflict-affected or ‘fragile’ states, subnational areas of violence may limit recovery efforts. Climate change is also having disproportionate effects on the poorest, and so equitable and environmentally sustainable pathways are key.

Finally, underlying vulnerabilities of people and communities can amplify crises. As such, a challenge in crises is to sustain the additional commitments of expenditure needed in other key areas (health, education, expanded and adaptive social transfers and social protection, agriculture, economic development including in the informal economy) to support people’s agency and also address sources of vulnerability. This involves extended targeting to include vulnerable people, and a focus within that on social groups especially badly affected in the pandemic – migrants, children in education, women informal workers, to name a few.

Transformative change during crises

How can the strategies above contribute to transformative change? Treating the pandemic and crises that followed as a longer-term humanitarian emergency of multiple disasters requires a transformation in its response: these should involve conflict-sensitive disaster risk management linked to public health responses, and peacebuilding activities within adaptive management frameworks. Instead, the history of emergency measures giving way too quickly to development – an aspect of the humanitarian-development divide – continues today.

The commitments to social expenditure listed above is just a first step towards tackling the structural inequalities that might prevent access to quality human development and livelihoods – and are transformative. Transformation can also be achieved by reasserting and upholding people’s human rights, and allowing and supporting the voice and agency of people in poverty so that they are better able to articulate their needs and engage in decision-making about their futures.

 Too often we see international agencies and governments removed from the realities of people’s lived experiences. Real transformation towards poverty eradication in contexts of complex crises starts from a premise of sustained risk-informed, people-centred change that asks vulnerable groups about their changing needs amidst crises and responds in real-time through adaptive and participatory decision-making.

 In an era when some governments have become more authoritarian and in which the international order is not only in flux but at loggerheads amongst elites, this has become a greater ask. However, there are authoritarian governments which are committed to parts of the agenda. And there are also places where democratic processes have been reaffirmed and progressive governments installed, which offer some hope.

 See also:

 Note: The Chronic Poverty Advisory Network has moved to IDS this summer, see our update here. This blog has been cross-post published on the IDS website on occasion of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.

CPAN moves to Institute of Development Studies

Logo for the Institute of Development Studies

Photo credit: IDS

After 11 years at ODI, the Chronic Poverty Advisory Network (CPAN) has moved to the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex.

With its strategic focus on reducing extreme inequities in ways that can foster more fulfilling lives, IDS is a very appropriate host for the network. It has a strong tradition of fostering participatory development, long-term multi-disciplinary research partnerships and civil society advocacy which makes it well placed to assist with CPAN’s further development.

IDS is located at the University of Sussex, and we're looking forward to the potential relationships with a wider circle of researchers and alumni networks working on poverty and inequality and related issues (climate change, conflict, politics, financial crises, migration).

At the same time, CPAN will continue to engage across the partnership and continue our bread and butter mixed methods poverty dynamics and policy analysis work at a national level, and the flagship Chronic Poverty Reports (including a report on Pandemic Poverty in partnership with the Covid Collective, making use of CPAN’s Covid-19 Poverty Monitoring Initiative). In addition, we will continue to carry out thematic research, such as recent publications on the education of children in poverty and on climate-smart agriculture. We will also continue our policy monitoring research, for example by updating the Poverty Eradication Policy Preparedness Index (PEPPI) 2015 baseline of policies in 30 countries to 2019 and the pandemic period and supporting advocacy efforts on poverty eradication.

Social protection links across sectors critical in getting to zero poverty

By: Vidya Diwakar and Adeniran Adedeji

Cassava processing, a source of employment to Nigerian womenPhoto credit: International Institute of Tropical Agriculture

Cassava processing, a source of employment to Nigerian women

Photo credit: International Institute of Tropical Agriculture

Nigeria has a large and growing share of people living in poverty. Roughly 40.1% of its population live below the national poverty line, while a similar share (46.4%) are multidimensionally poor. Covid19 has amplified these concerns, forecasted to push an estimated additional 10 million Nigerians into extreme poverty by 2022.

Research by CPAN and CSEA investigated key drivers associated with descents into and exits from relative monetary poverty across zones of Nigeria, the ways in which COVID-19 pandemic are likely to impact on these dynamics, and the implications for the design of social protection programmes and policy in Nigeria.

Pathways out of poverty constrained by vicious cycle of shocks and insecurity

The analysis uncovered limited sustained poverty escapes (6% of households), but a large share (19%) of households that experienced impoverishment or just transitory escapes from poverty, with spatial variations. If more of these households could be converted into sustained escapes, poverty would reduce in Nigeria.

To escape poverty, many households rely on land, education, and good health to enable livelihood-based pathways out of poverty. Engagement in non-farm enterprises (NFEs) is a common source of poverty escapes in the country, particularly for households with good health and some savings to start up the business. Salaried employment can drive sustained poverty escapes, particularly when coupled with completion of at least lower secondary education. In its absence, poverty escapes through agriculture are also possible, with land ownership important in guarding against subsequent descents into poverty.  

However, high volatility of income especially in non-farm businesses during Covid19 has aggravated the riskiness of enterprises, limited education access, worsened health outcomes, and constrained the ability of households in poverty to effectively respond to shocks. The resulting hunger and distress coping strategies that emerge during Covid19 has created a vicious cycle limiting the potential of households to develop viable livelihoods to escape poverty in the time ahead.

Figure 1: Vicious cycle (outer circle) limiting poverty escapes (inner circle)

What can be done to support asset-enabled livelihood pathways out of poverty in Nigeria?

The research identified various factors that hold back the emerging social protection system from having a greater impact in reducing poverty. Key among them include a heavy dependence on using a social register that remains limited geographically and in its ability to provide real-time information on a household’s potentially changing status, the latter especially important in Covid. There is a pressing need to scale up investments in social protection policies, programmes and systems at federal and state levels-- especially in real-time selection and updating, and identification of a wider range of participants.

In addition, integrating social protection with other interventions in human development and livelihood sectors is relevant in better balancing the 3Ps of social protection (protection, prevention, and promotion). However, in a situation of weak governance, the institutional mechanisms for arbitrage may be limited, and so prioritising issues that require integration becomes key, as is ensuring contextual relevance in different regions.

The results of the analysis point to issues particularly important in helping tackle chronic poverty, prevent impoverishment, and ensure sustained escapes from poverty, and that concurrently work to address the 3ps of social protection (protection, prevention, and promotion). Examples of such interventions include effectively addressing ill health through access to quality services free at the point of delivery, responding to key sources of livelihood risk in non-farm businesses and agriculture (e.g. through micro-insurance), and supporting asset development.

In efforts to integrate, social protection could be at the core of a sequence over a period of years, with social assistance gradually combined with individual and collective savings and credit (e.g. through GEEP), education catch-up if necessary, and then with technical and business skill upgrading, and business development advice and/or agricultural extension support.

Addressing the vicious cycle through integrated social protection is an important component of enabling sustained poverty escapes in Nigeria