56
Table 6.5: Poverty headcount, poor- and total population shares, by labor market characteristics of household head in percentages
Household head characteristics Poverty
headcount Share of poor
population Share of total
population Employed
35.0 66.6
69.6 Underemployed
41.6 17.3
15.2 Unemployed
39.4 5.0
4.6 Inactive
38.2 11.2
10.7 Day labourer
52.1 30.4
21.1 Salaried worker, private sector
31.4 6.7
7.6 Salaried worker, public sector
29.8 9.9
12.0 Self-employed
32.8 47.9
52.8 Employer
18.2 0.6
1.1 Unpaid family worker
30.8 4.6
5.4 Agriculture
38.7 32.3
30.1 Livestock
44.0 8.1
6.7 Manufacturingprocessing
31.9 2.6
2.9 Construction
42.8 12.1
10.2 Wholesale and retail trade
27.0 9.9
13.2 Transportation and communication
23.9 5.4
8.2 Health
20.1 0.6
1.1 Education
32.4 3.4
3.8 Other government services
27.4 5.8
7.6 UNNGOs
15.6 0.7
1.6 Other services
47.3 19.1
14.6
Looking at categories of employment, daily labor is conirmed to be associated with higher poverty rates. The poverty headcount for individuals in households with a day laborer head are more than 20 percentage points more likely to
be poor than those in households with a salaried head in either public or private sector jobs. Among the sector of employment, having the head working in agriculture or in livestock production is strongly correlated with poverty, in
line with the relatively higher poverty rates registered in rural areas and especially amongst the Kuchi population. In
particular, the emerging poverty proile and the lack of progress in poverty reduction over time could be explained by the signiicant contraction of agriculture production at the time of NRVA 2011-12 data collection.
7
The construction sector also emerges as particularly vulnerable, possibly relecting the higher incidence of casual and poor quality types of jobs
in this sector.
6.5 Conclusions
The analysis of data from NRVA 2011-12 reveals the absence of progress in poverty reduction over the past 4 years. While additional analysis would be required to better understand the causes for stagnating poverty despite the positive
performance of the Afghan economy, the preliminary analysis presented in this chapter seems to suggest that the poorest segment of the population have not beneited from the general improvement in economic conditions. In particular, limited
human capital endowments literacy, education attainment in poorer households might have prevented them from reaping the opportunities of better employment opportunities in the non-farm and high-skill service sector, resulting
in stagnating poverty rates and widening inequality. As poverty is concentrated amongst households engaged in the agriculture, the sector’s low productivity and the extreme volatility of agriculture production remain one of the biggest
challenges to poverty reduction in Afghanistan.
7 In particular, while the agricultural sector grew by more than 15 percent in 2007-08, it contracted by 7.6 percent in 2011-12.
POVERTY INCIDENCE, TREND AND PROFILING
57
FOOD SECURITY
7 FOOD SECURITY
SUMMARY. A high proportion of Afghanistan’s 27 million people face chronic and transitory food insecurity. Food insecurity
based on calorie consumption
1
is estimated at 30.1 percent, comparable to the 28.2 percent measured by NRVA 2007-08. Of the 7.6 million food-insecure people, an estimated 2.2 million or 8.5 percent are
very severely, 2.4 million 9.5 percent severely, and 3.1 million 12.2 percent moderately food insecure. The proportion of food insecurity increased in urban and to lower extent in rural populations, whereas
it slightly improved among the Kuchi compared to 2007-08. Food insecurity has increased in urban areas from 28.3 percent in 2007-08 to 34.4 percent 1.7 million people in 2011-12. In rural areas, an
estimated 29.0 percent 5.2 million people are food insecure. The Kuchi population is slightly but not signiicantly better off compared to the rural and urban, with 25.6 percent or about 350 thousand being
food insecure. Food insecurity is mainly attributed to households’ lack of access to sustainable income. The diet of the Afghan population is not only quantitatively inadequate, but also qualitatively poor and
heavily cereal-based. In total, 19.4 percent of the Afghan population or 4.9 million people do not consume adequate protein of at least 50 grams per person per day from the available food basket. Among them, 4.7
million people or 62 percent of the 7.6 million food-insecure people with calorie deiciency are deicient in both calories and protein. Inadequate protein and calorie consumption at household level will particularly
affect nearly a million under-ive children who are likely to be vulnerable to malnutrition.
7.1 Introduction
Food security exists when all people, at all times have physical, social and economic access to suficient, safe and nutritious food for a healthy and active life. In this report, households that meet a minimum of 2,100 calories per person
per day are considered as food secure. In the NRVA 2011-12, data were collected on household expenditure, quantities and type of foods, and number of days certain foods are consumed over a seven-day recall period, throughout the
survey period. This information allows a calculation of household food security, based on kilocalorie Kcals intake data.
2
Furthermore, thresholds of calorie consumption are used to categorize the severity of food insecurity in 5 groups from very severely food insecure to food secure see Table 7.1.
Table 7.1: Levels of food security
Level of food security Kcal intake per person per day
Very severely food insecure Less than 1,500
Severely food insecure 1,500 to 1,799
Moderately food insecure 1,800 to 2,099
Borderline 2,100 to 2,399
Food secure 2,400 and more
This chapter is divided into eight sections. Following this introduction; section 7.2 describes the overall current food security situation, in terms of the number and percentage of the food-insecure among urban, rural and Kuchi populations;
section 7.3 gives an indicative comparison of the food security situation of the NRVA 2011-12 with NRVA 2007-08; section 7.4 presents characteristics of food-insecure households; section 7.5 describes the impact of seasonality on
food security; section 7.6 describes access and supply; section 7.7 provides information about dietary diversity and the calculation of the Food Consumption Score; whilst section 7.8 outlines coping mechanisms generally adopted by
surveyed households.
1 Excluding Helmand and Khost provinces due to lack of reliable data on food security. 2 Adjusted for age, sex and additional caloric requirements during the winter period.
