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This paper presents trends in monetary and nonmonetary dimensions of wellbeing in Ethiopia using data from the Household Consumption and Expenditure and Welfare Monitoring surveys implemented in 2000, 2005, and 2011. The paper provides evidence on changes in overlapping deprivations using a non-index approach to multidimensional poverty. It assesses the performance of various dimensions in education, health, and living standards, taking one indicator at a time. It then examines the overlap between different dimensions of poverty and examines how this has changed over time in Ethiopia and across rural and urban areas. It highlights that although Ethiopia's multidimensional poverty index is very high, there have been improvements in overlapping deprivations and, as a result, the number of individuals deprived in multiple dimensions has fallen.

Health monitoring & evaluation --- Health, nutrition and population --- Macroeconomics and economic growth --- Multi-dimensional poverty --- Population policies --- Poverty reduction --- Rural poverty reduction

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Several developing countries are currently implementing phone surveys in response to immediate data needs to monitor the socioeconomic impact of COVID-19. However, phone surveys are often subject to coverage and non-response bias that can compromise the representativeness of the sample and the external validity of the estimates obtained from the survey. Using data from high-frequency phone surveys in Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria, and Uganda, this study investigates the magnitude and source of biases present in these four surveys and explores the effectiveness of techniques applied to reduce bias. Varying levels of coverage and non-response bias are found in all four countries. The successfully contacted samples in these four countries were biased toward wealthier households with higher living standards. Left unaddressed, this bias would result in biased estimates from the interviewed sample that do not fully reflect the situation of poorer households in the country. However, phone survey biases can be substantially reduced by applying survey weight adjustments using information from the representative survey from which the sample is drawn. Applying these methods to the four surveys resulted in a substantial reduction in bias, although the bias was not fully eradicated. This highlights one of the potential advantages of drawing phone survey samples from existing face-to-face, representative surveys over random digit dialing or using lists from telecom providers where such adjustment methods can be more limited.

Business Cycles and Stabilization Policies --- Coronavirus --- Coverage Bias --- COVID-19 --- Disease Control and Prevention --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Inequality --- Living Standards --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Nonresponse Bias --- Pandemic Impact --- Poverty Reduction --- Sample Representativeness --- Statistical and Mathematical Sciences --- Survey Methodology --- Weighting Methods

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Donors increasingly fund interventions to counteract inequality in developing countries, where they fear it can foment instability and undermine nation-building efforts. To succeed, aid relies on the principle of upward accountability to donors. But federalism shifts the accountability of subnational officials downward to regional and local voters. What happens when aid agencies fund anti-inequality programs in federal countries? Does federalism undermine aid? Does aid undermine federalism? Or can the political and fiscal relations that define a federal system resolve the contradiction internally? This study explores this paradox via the Promotion of Basic Services program in Ethiopia, the largest donor-financed investment program in the world. Using an original panel database comprising the universe of Ethiopian woredas (districts), the study finds that horizontal (geographic) inequality decreased substantially. Donor-financed block grants to woredas increased the availability of primary education and health care services in the bottom 20 percent of woredas. Weaker evidence from household surveys suggests that vertical inequality across wealth groups (within woredas) also declined, implying that individuals from the poorest households benefit disproportionately from increasing access to and utilization of such services. The evidence suggests that by combining strong upward accountability over public investment with extensive citizen engagement on local issues, Ethiopia's federal system resolves the instrumental dissonance posed by aid-funded programs to combat inequality in a federation.

Access to finance --- Accountability --- Aid --- Banks and banking reform --- Citizen engagement --- Federalism --- Finance and financial sector development --- Health, nutrition and population --- Inequality --- Local government --- Macroeconomics and economic growth --- Population policies --- Public sector corruption and anticorruption measures --- Public sector development --- Public services

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This study investigates the effects of public transfers and taxes on the wellbeing of children in Ethiopia. It applies the Commitment to Equity for Children methodology to examine the burdens of taxation and the benefits from government transfers and spending, and their differential wellbeing impacts on children. The study integrates data from the 2018/19 Ethiopia Socioeconomic Survey, which also collected data on taxes and transfers, with administrative data. Measuring its distribution by child monetary and multidimensional wellbeing, the study finds, on average, a progressive, poverty-reducing and equalizing fiscal system. However, there are important differences in the distribution of some of its elements. Indirect taxes, comprising of value-added and excise taxes, are regressive. Similarly, primary education spending, the largest of in-kind transfers, is only progressive in urban areas. On poverty and inequality, the fiscal system reduced the monetary child poverty headcount by 21 percent and the poverty gap by 33 percent. The effect is stronger for girls and children in rural areas than for boys and children in urban areas, therefore reducing inequalities in poverty rates. However, this is only the case when in-kind transfers for education and health are considered. Without the inclusion of in-kind transfers, the study finds that the fiscal system is not well calibrated to reduce poverty. This highlights the essential role of public services, not only in delivering fundamental child rights, but also in reducing poverty among children.

Foster home care.

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The rural land use fee and agricultural income tax are major payments for rural landholders in Ethiopia. This paper examines the gender implications of these taxes using tax payment and individual land ownership data from the Ethiopian Socioeconomic Survey 2018/2019. It finds that the rural land use fee and agricultural income tax, which are assessed on the area of landholdings, are regressive. Female-headed- and female adult-only households bear a larger tax burden than male-headed and dual-adult households. Norms limiting women's role in agriculture and gender agricultural productivity gaps are likely to result in lower consumption and accordingly, a higher tax burden for female-headed households than for male-headed households. Reducing the tax rates for smallholders can diminish the gender difference in tax burdens, but the tax continues to be regressive. This highlights the difficulty of area-based land taxes to be vertically equitable.

Agriculture --- Gender --- Gender and Development --- Gender and Economic Policy --- Gender and Poverty --- Gender and Rural Development --- Inequality --- Land Ownership --- Land Use Policy --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Poverty Reduction --- Regressive Tax --- Rural Land Policies for Poverty Reduction --- Smallholder Farmers --- Tax Incidence --- Taxation --- Taxation and Subsidies