Tassew Woldehanna

Cohort Profile: The Young Lives Study

Young Lives is an international longitudinal study investigating the changing nature of childhood poverty in four low-income countries [Ethiopia, India (Andhra Pradesh), Peru and Vietnam] over a 15-year period. In each country, the cohort is comprised of ≈ 2000 children aged between 6 and 18 months and up to 1000 children aged between 7 and 8 years, recruited in 2002 and sampled from 20 sentinel sites. The first survey data collection from primary caregivers and older children took place in 2002, the second in 2006-07 and the third in 2009-10. Data on the community contexts were collected to complement the household surveys. To elaborate and extend the quantitative data, longitudinal qualitative research with a subgroup of the children was carried out in 2007, 2008 and 2010-11. Topic areas covered included nutrition, health and well-being, cognitive and physical development, health behaviours and education, as well as the social, demographic and economic status of the household. Survey data from the study are archived in the International Section of the UK Public Data Archive.

Growth and Chronic Poverty: Evidence from Rural Communities in Ethiopia

Abstract What keeps some people persistently poor, even in the context of relative high growth? In this article, we explore this question using a 15-year longitudinal data set from Ethiopia. We compare the findings of an empirical growth model with those derived from a model of the determinants of chronic poverty. We ask whether the chronically poor are simply not benefiting in the same way from the same factors that allowed others to escape poverty, or whether there are latent factors that leave them behind? We find that this chronic poverty is associated with several initial characteristics: lack of physical assets, education and ‘remoteness’ in terms of distance to towns or poor roads. The chronically poor appear to benefit from some of the drivers of growth, such as better roads or extension services, in much the same way that the non-chronically poor benefit. However, they appear to have lower growth in this period, related to time-invariant characteristics, and this suggests that they face a considerable growth and standard of living handicap.

The invisibility of children's paid and unpaid work: implications for Ethiopia's national poverty reduction policy

The complexities of intergenerational and gendered intra-household resource allocations are frequently overlooked in poverty reduction policies. To address this lacuna, this article focuses on links between macro-development policies and childrens paid and unpaid work burden in Ethiopia. Using a mixed methods approach, quantitative household survey data results highlight the importance of household wealth and assets, family composition and access to education services, while the qualitative results underscore the role of culturally ascribed gendered and age-specific conceptualizations of work, parental attitudes and childrens agency. The article concludes with a discussion of the challenges national development plans need to address to tackle childhood poverty more effectively.

Is the adapted Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) developed internationally to measure food insecurity valid in urban and rural households of Ethiopia

BackgroundThe concept of food insecurity encompasses three dimensions. One of these dimensions, the access component of household food insecurity is measured through the use of the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS). Despite its application in Ethiopia and other similar developing countries, its performance is still poorly explored. Our study aims to evaluate the validity of the HFIAS in Ethiopia.MethodsWe conducted repeated cross-sectional studies in urban and rural villages of the Butajera District in southern Ethiopia. The validation was conducted on a pooled sample of 1,516 households, which were selected using a simple random sampling method. The HFIAS was translated into the local Amharic language and tested for face validity. We also evaluated the tool’s internal consistency using Cronbach’s alpha and factor analysis. We tested for parallelism on HFIAS item response curves across wealth status and further evaluated the presence of a dose-response relationship between the food insecurity level and the consumption of food items, as well as between household wealth status and food insecurity. Additionally, we evaluated the reproducibility of the tool through the first and second round of HFIAS scores.ResultsThe HFIAS exhibited a good internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha for the values of rounds 1 and 2 were 0.76 and 0.73, respectively). A factor analysis (varimax rotation) resulted in two main factors: the first factor described a level of mild to moderate food insecurity, while the second factor described severe food insecurity. HFIAS item response curves were parallel across wealth status in the sample households, with a dose-response trend between food insecurity levels and the likelihood of previous day food consumption being observed. The overall HFIAS score did not change over the two rounds of data collection.ConclusionsThe HFIAS is a simple and valid tool to measure the access component of household food insecurity. However, we recommend the adaptation of questions and wordings and adding examples before application, as we found a discrepancy in understanding of some of the nine HFIAS questions.

Growth and Poverty in Rural Ethiopia: Evidence from 15 Communities 1994-2004

This paper studies the process of growth, poverty and poverty persistence in a panel data set covering 15 communities across rural Ethiopia 1994-2004. It describes growth and the evolution of poverty, illustrating both considerable growth and poverty reduction. It highlights the presence of ‘chronic’ poverty, people that appear poor relatively persistently in the data.

Climate change, crop production and child under nutrition in Ethiopia; a longitudinal panel study

BackgroundThe amount and distribution of rainfall and temperature influences household food availability, thus increasing the risk of child under nutrition. However, few studies examined the local spatial variability and the impact of temperature and rainfall on child under nutrition at a smaller scale (resolution). We conducted this study to evaluate the effect of weather variables on child under nutrition and the variations in effects across the three agro ecologies of Ethiopia.MethodsA longitudinal panel study was conducted. We used crop productions (cereals and oilseeds), livestock, monthly rainfall and temperature, and child under nutrition data for the period of 1996, 1998, 2000 and 2004. We applied panel regression fixed effects model.ResultsThe study included 43 clusters (administrative zones) and 145 observations. We observed a spatio temporal variability of rainfall, stunting and underweight. We estimated that for a given zone, one standard deviation increase in rainfall leads to 0.242 standard deviations increase in moderate stunting. Additionally, a one standard deviation increase temperature leads to 0.216 standard deviations decrease in moderate stunting. However, wasting was found to be poorly related with rainfall and temperature. But severe wasting showed a positive relationship with the quadratic term of rainfall.ConclusionsWe conclude that rainfall and temperature are partly predicting the variation in child stunting and underweight. Models vary in predicting stunting and underweight across the three agro ecologic zones. This could indicate that a single model for the three agro ecologies may not be not applicable.

Productive Safety Net Program and Children's Time Use Between Work and Schooling in Ethiopia

A child-restraint harness is coupled to a juvenile vehicle seat and arranged to restrain a child seat in the juvenile vehicle seat. The child-restraint harness includes first and second shoulder straps.

Growth trajectories from conception through middle childhood and cognitive achievement at age 8 years: Evidence from four low- and middle-income countries

Child chronic malnutrition is endemic in low- and middle-income countries and deleterious for child development. Studies investigating the relationship between nutrition at different periods of childhood, as measured by growth in these periods (growth trajectories), and cognitive development have produced mixed evidence. Although an explanation of this has been that different studies use different approaches to model growth trajectories, the differences across approaches are not well understood. Furthermore, little is known about the pathways linking growth trajectories and cognitive achievement. In this paper, we develop and estimate a general path model of the relationship between growth trajectories and cognitive achievement using data on four cohorts from Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam. The model is used to: (a) compare two of the most common approaches to modelling growth trajectories in the literature, namely the lifecourse plot and the conditional body size model, and (b) investigate the potential channels via which the association between growth in each period and cognitive achievement manifests. We show that the two approaches are expected to produce systematically different results that have distinct interpretations. Results suggest that growth from conception through age 1 year, between age 1 and 5 years, and between 5 and 8 years, are each positively and significantly associated with cognitive achievement at age 8 years and that this may be partly explained by the fact that faster-growing children start school earlier. We also find that a significant share of the association between early growth and later cognitive achievement is mediated through growth in interim periods.

Growth Recovery and Faltering through Early Adolescence in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Determinants and Implications for Cognitive Development

Child chronic undernutrition, as measured by stunting, is prevalent in low- and middle-income countries and is among the major threats to child development. While stunting and its implications for cognitive development have been considered irreversible beyond early childhood there is a lack of consensus in the literature on this, as there is some evidence of recovery from stunting and that this recovery may be associated with improvements in cognition. Less is known however, about the drivers of growth recovery and the aspects of recovery linked to cognitive development. In this paper we investigate the factors associated with growth recovery and faltering through age 12 years and the implications of the incidence, timing, and persistence of post-infancy recovery from stunting for cognitive development using longitudinal data from Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam. We find that the factors most systematically associated with accelerated growth both before and after early childhood and across countries include mothers height, household living standards and shocks, community wages, food prices, and garbage collection. Our results suggest that post-infancy recovery from stunting is more likely to be systematically associated with higher achievement scores across countries when it is persistent and that associations between growth trajectories and cognitive achievement in middle childhood do not persist through early adolescence across countries. Overall, our findings indicate that growth after early childhood is responsive to changes in the household and community environments and that growth promotion after early childhood may yield improvements in child cognitive development.

Addressing gendered risks and vulnerabilities through social protection: examples of good practice from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Peru

This article examines three social protection interventions from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Peru, and discusses the extent to which they effectively integrate a gender perspective to address poverty and vulnerability. All three case studies have important design features aiming to tackle gender inequalities in both the economic and social spheres, which is critical for programme effectiveness. Despite these examples of good practice, however, there are gaps in programme design, particularly in explicitly challenging existing inequalities between men and women, for instance, such as promoting womens quality participation in the labour market, and their active engagement, voice and agency in household and community decision-making. Moreover, greater investment in the implementation of such features is often needed to effectively translate programme goals into gender equitable outcomes and impacts.