Child Poverty in Mozambique. A Situation and Trend ... - Unicef

per cent of the working population, while men predominate in all the other major
sectors of the economy, where earning potential is higher. Women in the labour force
have lower educational levels than men, with 15.1 per cent of men in the workforce
having attained upper primary education or better compared with only 4.5 per cent of
participating women (GoM, 2006).
Disparities between households nationwide have been examined by James et al.
(2005), who measure changes in inequality between the two IAF surveys. The
authors note that while all sections of society enjoyed a rapid annual increase in
consumption between the sample periods with real per capita growth averaging over
3 per cent annually, the rate of growth in consumption was slightly higher for richer
households. This has led to a moderate, though not statistically significant, increase in
inequality at the national level while inequality in real consumption between provinces
and regions has diminished over time. Ibraimo (2005) supports this result, finding
that the coefficient of regional variation for a wide range of socioeconomic indicators
has fallen. Simler and Nhate (2005) find that of the total inequality in Mozambique,
between 83 per cent and 86 per cent occurs within districts rather than between
districts: i.e. poor households typically live alongside non-poor ones, showing that
poverty and inequality in Mozambique are widely distributed phenomena and calling
into question the feasibility of geographic targeting of anti-poverty efforts at “poor
areas.”
Intra-household inequality, though not easily assessed, is also of particular concern
in relation to children. A recent study by Nhate et al. (2005) examines potential
discrimination in resource allocation within households against children who are
not biological descendants of the household head. 16 The rationale behind the
study is that the AIDS pandemic is significantly increasing the number of orphaned
children and that many will reside in families where the household head is not their
biological parent. Government policy is based on the extended family being the first
preference in care for orphans and institutionalisation of children being a last resort
(GoM, 2004a). The authors’ results point to discrimination within poor households
in the intra-household allocation of resources against children who are not the direct
biological descendants of the household head. This discrimination is identified at
the national, rural, and urban levels. AIDS is likely to aggravate the problem over the
next decade by substantially increasing the number of children requiring care from
neighbours, friends, and relatives due to the death of one or more of their parents.
The authors conclude that assistance should be targeted towards children who are
not the biological descendants of the household head, particularly those who are only
attending school irregularly, if at all.
Two broad conclusions follow. Firstly, the precarious status of many households
implies that the overall objective of poverty reduction should include direct efforts
to protect poor households from shocks, particularly female headed households,
allowing them to maintain an adequate and relatively stable standard of living (e.g.
targeted cash transfers). However, the broad distribution of childhood poverty and
inequality and the very low population density in rural areas mean that policies
targeting the poorest and most vulnerable children need to be designed very
carefully. Secondly, measurement of poverty should not rely on any single indicator or
observation; a more pluralistic approach is required, not least because a large adverse
regional shock to one of the two most populous provinces – Nampula and Zambezia
– in advance of the next household survey could have a big impact on the decline in
the national poverty trend.
16 While it is not normally possible to distinguish between household members using IAF data, the authors manage to do so by examining
changes in expenditure on adult-goods following the addition of an extra child to the household – the “outlay equivalence” method (Deaton et
al., 1989).
CHILDHOOD POVERTY IN MOZAMBIQUE: A SITUATION AND TRENDS ANALYSIS
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