Does productive safety net programme contribute to reduce households’ poverty? Evidence from Rural Tigrai, Ethiopia

Abstract

This paper evaluated the impact of productive safety net programme on households' povertyreduction in Tigrai, Ethiopia, using primary data collected from 650 households in 2019. Apropensity score matching, Foster-Greer-Thorbecke, and Oaxaca-Blinder decompositiontechniques were employed to analyse data. Using the total poverty line, the poverty rate waslower for programme beneficiaries (27 percent) than non-beneficiaries (30 percent). The povertyrate for female-headed households was higher (32 percent) than male-headed households (25percent). Households administered under Relief Society of Tigrai (REST) experienced loweredpoverty rate (26 percent) than households administered under government (31 percent). Totalconsumption per adult equivalent for REST administered households was three times higher thangovernment-administered households. Furthermore, a decomposition analysis revealed thatlivestock holding, father's education, off-farm income, access to irrigation, farm size, and type ofrural productive safety net programme (REST) explained gender gaps by 34, 29, 28, 24, 18, and13 percent, respectively while dependency ratio, mother's education widened gender povertygaps by 26 and 22 percent, respectively. Thus, productive safety net programme played asignificant role in reducing households' poverty and able to reach the poorest households.Hence, to reduce the overall poverty level of the region as well as the country, due attention hasto be given to reducing gender disparity in poverty and sustained effort is needed togovernment-administered productive safety net programme districts (woredas) to accelerate therate of poverty reduction.