Sale of animals and animal products

50 POVERTY INCIDENCE, TREND AND PROFILING 6 POVERTY INCIDENCE, TREND AND PROFILING SUMMARY. The analysis of NRVA 2011-12 indicates that poverty has not changed over time, with about 36 percent of the population still consuming below the poverty line. Poverty remains higher in rural areas and amongst the Kuchi population. Poverty has also remained unchanged within most regions, and signiicant changes in poverty are observed in only two regions: in the North-East, where poverty headcount increased from 36.4 to 50.9 percent, and in the North where it declined from 39.4 to 31.7. While average per capita consumption has increased, one of the explanations for stagnating poverty over time is widening inequality, with consumption of richer parts of the population growing faster. The top consumption quintile has experienced annual growth rates more than three times higher than the bottom one over the four years in between the latest two NRVA survey rounds. At the same time, inequality measured by the Gini index has increased from 29.7 to 31.6. As the labor endowment is one of the most critical assets for households, poverty is strongly correlated with household size and demographic composition, being the highest in households with higher dependency ratios. Similarly, education and employment status of the household head are matched with wide differences in poverty vulnerability. In particular, the analysis reveals that about 70 percent of the poor population belongs to households headed by illiterate or uneducated individuals. Moreover, household head’s underemployment, casual labor and employment in the farm or construction sectors are strongly correlated with higher poverty incidence.

6.1 Introduction

One of the main objectives of the NRVA is to provide information on living standards, on their evolution over time, and their distribution over households. Of particular concerns are living standards amongst the poorest segments of the population, and NRVA survey data provide the principal means for estimating the extent and severity of poverty in Afghanistan. The measure of welfare adopted to assess population living standards is based on household consumption. In particular, an individual is considered as poor if herhis level of consumption is not suficient to satisfy basic needs i.e. if herhis consumption falls below the minimum threshold identiied by the poverty line. In line with international standards, the oficial absolute poverty line for Afghanistan is estimated following the Cost of Basic Needs CBN approach and it was set using the NRVA 2007-08. The CBN absolute poverty line represents the level of per capita consumption at which the members of a household can be expected to meet their “basic needs” in terms of both food and non-food consumption. 1 In order to assess the evolution of wellbeing over time, the 2007-08 poverty line was updated to 2011-12 prices to relect changes in the cost of living. 2 This chapter focuses on the estimation and trend analysis of poverty and inequality, and it presents some basic correlates between household characteristics and poverty. 1 More speciically, the food component of the poverty line captures the cost of consuming 2,100 Kcal per day following the typical food consumption patterns of the relatively poor; the non-food component of the poverty line is estimated as the median non-food expenditure of individuals with food consumption around the food poverty line. See IRoA and WB 2010. 2 For more details, see Annex VII.