Socioeconomic Vulnerability in sub-Saharan Africa: Lessons Learned - PDF document

Socioeconomic Vulnerability in sub-Saharan Africa: Lessons Learned from the Millennium Development Framework and Implications for the Sustainable Development Goals Henry V. Doctor 1 and Theresa W. Ndavi 2 1 Henry V. Doctor, World Health Organization, Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean, Cairo, Egypt; E- mail: doctorh@who.int 2 Theresa W. Ndavi, USAID, Health Policy Plus, Morning Side Office Park, Nairobi, Kenya; E-mail: Theresa.Ndavi@thepalladiumgroup.com Paper prepared for presentation at the XXVIII International Population Conference, Cape Town, South Africa, 29 October – 4 November 2017. Poster session: Tuesday 31 October 2017: 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM, Exhibition Hall 2 1

Socioeconomic Vulnerability in sub-Saharan Africa: Lessons Learned from the Millennium Development Framework and Implications for the Sustainable Development Goals Abstract Global mobilization behind the MDGs produced the most successful anti-poverty movement in history. By 2015, the MDGs helped keep 1 billion people out of extreme poverty and led to improved lives of many people. Nevertheless, inequalities persist, progress has been uneven, and women continue to be disadvantaged. We use data from Demographic and Health Surveys (29 countries) in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) conducted between 1990 and 2015 to examine the relative ranking of women ( 𝑜 =690,128) across the wealth index scale by identifying the characteristics of women which influence their likelihood of belonging to “poor” or “rich” households. Ordered probit regression results show that being young, married, urban resident, having some formal schooling, and living in Eastern Africa was associated with higher likelihood of falling within the higher categories of the wealth status index. Being head of the household or living in Middle and Southern Africa was associated with lower categories of wealth status; and women reported low wealth status ranking between the surveys. We interpret these results in line with Sustainable Development Goal 1 which focuses on ending poverty in all its forms everywhere by 2030 and the need to identify and respond appropriately to socio protection challenges in SSA. Introduction The just concluded Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) became synonymous with poverty eradication as it was the key focus in achieving and realising them. The MDGs in themselves were developed and defined to track a country’s performance in its quest towards eradicating poverty primarily through meeting the set targets within the eight defined goals. All other seven goals were linked to Goal 1: eradicate extreme hunger and poverty; and failure to meet them meant no progress towards overall poverty eradication. Extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa decreased by 14.2 percentage points, from 56.9% in 1990 to 42.8% in 2012. However, despite the reduction in poverty rates, the increase in population has contributed towards the increase in the absolute number of the poor from 280 million in 1990 to 389 million in 2012 (Beegle et al. 2016). Furthermore, the MDGs and their implementation were focused to a large extent on least developed countries. Majority of the least developed countries set highly ambitious targets at the national level and furthermore failed to meet them. Due to the current prevailing political and social dynamics in the world, poverty eradication has currently become a global task that should be undertaken by all (United Nations, 2015). Following the momentum for the MDGs, the 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim at providing an opportunity to address the existing gaps based on pertinent lessons from the MDGs as well as bearing in mind the various other emerging socio-economic issues. The growing need to end poverty still prevails in the world (World Bank and IMF 2016). Over the last few decades, natural and man-made disasters, rural-urban migration, rising unemployment, global warming and several other unplanned and undesired situations, have led to increased proportions of people living below the poverty line. This has been observed among those who have always been considered as poor as well as those that have acquired Middle Income Country (MIC) status (Sumner 2010). Hence, policies and strategies will vary significantly across countries when seeking to achieve the all-encompassing SDGs 2

aimed at eradicating poverty. Moreover, this needs to be accompanied by the relevant systems, structures and tools that must be put in place for use by countries to reduce and eventually eradicate poverty. Information and data must be availed to ensure appropriate target-setting with defined milestones by 2030. Sub-Saharan Africa continues to face challenges in realising a poverty-free continent (World Bank and IMF 2017). These challenges include political instability, drought, famine and floods (which are all linked to climate changes), lack of effective social protection measures, global warming, unchecked population growth with unmatched social response, unemployment and underemployment, increasing social pressures and instability, rapid urbanisation, changing social and cultural values, gender inequalities and other social harmful practices such as gender based violence, female-genital mutilation and early child marriage. The gains made since the 1990s in improving the well-being of people in sub-Saharan Africa have been curtailed by new epidemics/pandemics such as HIV/AIDS, drug resistant Tuberculosis and Ebola coupled with weak health system infrastructure (Gostin et al. 2014). Moreover, the merging new diseases including noncommunicable diseases such as diabetes and hypertension and malignancies are on the rise which the systems can hardly respond to (WHO 2014). With respect to the education sector, adult literacy rates have generally been low in sub-Saharan Africa than the rest of the world. For example, UNESCO (2013) reported that in 2011 adult literacy rate was 59% in sub-Saharan Africa than the global average of 84%; which means that the available skill sets produced cannot contribute to a productive economic society and is also closely linked to early/teen pregnancies, new cases of HIV among young girls, poor child rearing practices and drug and alcohol abuse. The overdependence of select sources of national income for instance in the mining sector where oil reserves have dwindled and many others have resulted in not much diversity in leveraging natural resources for development (Downie and Cooke 2011). Poor governance is a feature that is not new to sub-Saharan Africa and its implications ranging from corruption, failure in political democracy and wide inequities and inequalities in wealth distribution usually with only about 90% of resources with/circulating among 1% of the population (United Nations 2004). The lack of non-responsive polices and strategies for those who are most vulnerable is another contributing factor to the challenges; and the lack of quality, reliable, real time data that would be used to inform policies, programmes and service delivery seriously handicaps the process. Despite the socio-economic achievements made in sub-Saharan Africa, women remain at a disadvantage: about 75% of working-age men participate in the labour force, compared to only half of working-age women. Globally, women earn 24% less than men; and in 85% of the 92 countries with data on unemployment rates by level of education for the years 2012 – 2013, women with advanced education had higher rates of unemployment than men with similar levels of education (United Nations 2015). Against this background, we examine the relative ranking of women interviewed in 29 nationally representative Demographic and Household Surveys (DHS) between 1990 and 2015 across the wealth index scale. Specifically, the objective of the study is to identify characteristics of women (aged 15-49 years) which influence their likelihood of belong ing to “poor” or “rich” households. Adopting this strategy has implications on efforts to identify the profile of women and their households from which efforts to improve their health and socio-economic well-being can be targeted at. 3