| Abstract |
RESULTS ON POVERTY USING A WELFARE MEASURE
Poverty and extreme poverty have declined since 2009/10. Basic needs poverty declined from 34.9 percent to 30.4 percent between 2009/10 and 2014/15 and food (extreme) poverty declined from 11.7 percent to 10.8 percent in the same interval. The figures come from the HBS's consumption-based headcount index, which measures the proportion of the population with a consumption level below the poverty line (30.4 percent) of the Zanzibar population could not meet their basic consumption needs. About 10.8 percent of the population is extremely poor and cannot afford to buy basic foodstuffs to meet their minimum nutritional requirements of 2,200 kilocalories (Kcal) per day. These poverty figures are estimated using respectively, the national basic needs poverty line of TZS 53,377 per adult per month and the national food poverty line of TZS 38,071 per adult per month.
The depth of poverty also declined. Depth captures the gap between households' consumption level and the poverty line where the non-poor households depth is zero. It declined by 1.0 percentage point. The rural poverty gap slightly increased by 0.1 percentage point while overall drop was 0.9 percentage points which was mainly driven by a drop of poverty gap in urban areas of 2.2 percentage points. In addition, a decline in the share of the population living in poverty in Zanzibar witnessed a small reduction in the level of deprivation of population. This suggests that households were able to reduce their consumption shortfall by a small margin relative to the poverty line. The consumption gap of poor which means that the decline poverty index is explained by increase in the number for non-poor.
Majority of poor and non poor people are still clustered around the poverty line. Around 443,540 Zanzibar people are still below the basic needs poverty line. While the basic needs poverty headcount declined by 4.5 percent, the absolute number of poor people only declined by about 400 people due to population growth. The proportion of people along food poverty line has remained virtually unchanged over the last five years from 10.8 percent (157,133) in 2014/15 to 11.7 percent (149,205 ) in 2009/10. The food poverty headcount rate fell by 0.9 percentage point and population growth was larger than this reduction.
A large share of the population hovers around the poverty line, likely to escape poverty but also prone to fall into it. Small changes in the national poverty line yield significant differences in estimated poverty levels, indicating a high concentration of individuals around the basic needs threshold. For example, an increase of the poverty line by 20 percent (TZS 10,677 per adult per month) lead to a change of poverty rate by 50.9 percent (the headcount rate would increase from 30.4 percent to 46.0 percent). The significant number of people clustering around the poverty line suggest that an important proportion of moderately poor people are positioned to move out of poverty, but also that an important proportion of non-poor people are vulnerable to falling into poverty.
Poor households are larger in size and have more dependents than non-poor households. The interaction between family size and poverty is bidirectional. The large number of children and dependents affects the ability of the poor to cover their basic food needs and to move out of poverty. On the other hand, poor households tend to have more children to compensate for their inability to rise from poverty by Zanzibar Household Budget Survey 2014/15 xiii investing in the human capital of their children and having many as an insurance strategy against infant mortality, trapping them in a vicious cycle of poverty.
Almost three quarters (74.3 percent) of the basic needs poor and 81.8 percent of the food poor in Zanzibar live in rural areas. Poverty is particularly pervasive in rural areas, where more than half (56 percent) of the Zanzibar population lives. About 329,550 people in the rural population live in basic needs poverty and 128,335 live in food poverty, compared to 113,990 living in basic needs poverty and 28,598 in food poverty in urban areas.
Poverty is negatively correlated with higher levels of education of the head of household. Higher education levels of the household's head, particularly secondary and upper education, seem to be associated with better income-generating opportunities and significantly tend to lower poverty levels. Education positively affects the living standards and poverty reduction, either directly or indirectly through its impact on health gains, productivity, social integration and so forth. Running a non-farm business is associated with lower poverty. For the first time HBS 2014/15 asked in detail about non-agricultural businesses the households are running. It is clear that households with a non-agricultural business have lower levels of poverty, suggesting that the development of non-farm employment can offer a pathway out of poverty. However the results show that being employed is not a guarantee of not being poor. Households with four or more employed have a high basic needs poverty headcount rate (30.4 percent). These results are picking up again on the fact that poverty increases with household size. The working poor are earning low wages which are not high enough to lift them above the poverty line. Increasing welfare state provision, increasing minimum wages and absorbing educational and health care costs are methods to potentially reduce the proportion of working poor.
Working on agriculture does not impact the incidence of being poor or non-poor. The poverty rate for the rural population who are engaging in the agricultural activities is virtually identical to the national poverty headcount rate. However, the poverty rate is quite a bit higher (43.3 percent) in rural for the household that are not engaging in agricultural activities. Almost three-fifths (58.5 percent) of the poor population are using agricultural land. Urban households that are using agricultural land have a low poverty headcount rate (16.0 percent).
Consumption inequality remains stable and moderate. The Gini coefficient measures income inequality or consumption expenditures across a nation's population based on consumption per capita. For the past five years, Zanzibar experienced an unchanged consumption per capital of 0.30. Zanzibar's inequality level is moderate compared to favourably with sub Saharan Africa (an average of 45.1).
The changing of HBS design, has a large impact on poverty trend but the adjustments were made to counter the changes in design to support the decline of poverty. Assessing the changes in poverty levels over time is subject to issues of comparability stemming from changes in the survey design and methodological improvements implemented during the 2014/15 HBS. These issues were addressed by re-evaluating the consumption aggregate for 2009/10 using the same approach as in 2014/15. Zanzibar Household Budget Survey 2014/15.
The picture of overall food security is a mixed. The average number of meals eaten a day has risen in 2014/15 compare to previous surveys. However almost one-fifth of rural households are currently categorised as severely food insecure. Kaskazini Unguja seems to suffer on food security similar as Pemba regions and this is confirmed by other data sources.
RESULTS ON POVERTY USING NON -WELFARE MEASURES:
Significant improvements have been achieved in relation to the standard of housing. Majority of houses were built by using modern materials as especially in urban area. The proportion of households connected to electricity has increased to 44.2 percent in 2014/15 from 25.2 percent in 2004/05. Access to an improved water source stands at 90.5 percent which is a slight increase compared to previous HBSs. Nearly all (96.9 percent) households travel less than one kilometre for fetching water. The proportion of households using flush toilets increased to 33.0 percent in 2014/15 from 19.6 percent in 2009/10 while the proportion of households with no toilet decreased to 16.3 percent from 20.3 percent. However, there is still a big rural/urban and Unguja/Pemba disparity in these indicators.
The situation in the education sector is a positive one. Adult literacy rates continue to increase slowly. The attendance of 7 to 16 year old children at school has risen by ten percent in the last five years. Basic and primary net and gross enrolment rates have increased to 96.5 percent for households live less than two kilometres away from the nearest primary school. The only seemingly negative indicator is in relation to secondary school net and gross enrolments rates which seem to have fallen in the last five years, this is probably a result of issues with sample design in 2009/10 HBS. Secondary net enrolments rates have increased in the last ten years. Overall in the health sector there have been significant improvements, most remarkably in the reduction of the incidence of malaria. The percentage of households living less than five kilometres from a health centre is now 100 percent. The percentage of people who paid for consultation or advice has increased greatly from 14.4 percent in 2009/10 to 36.6 percent in 2014/15 HBS and worryingly 8.6 percent of respondents did not seek medical help as it was too expensive, but generally there appears to have been encouraging developments in the health sector.
OTHER CHAPTERS WITHIN HBS .
Demographically the HBS 2014/15 shows very few differences from the previous HBS. The only exception is in relation to birth notification, which has improved highly. Birth certification for people aged less than 18 years is high in all districts, with almost universal certification in Kusini district that accounting 97.3 percent. The results show a very slight increase in the average household size, with a small different between urban and rural areas. Interestingly the dependency ratio has declined, suggesting the continued slow reduction of the fertility rate. All most a quarter (22.8 percent) of households are headed by a woman, there is no significant change over time. About five percent of children have been orphaned, with a similar percentage noted in the previous HBS. Zanzibar Household Budget Survey 2014/15.
Most employed people are subsistence farmers, fishers or hunters (41.8 percent).The second largest occupation is elementary occupations (16.5 percent) which consists of street vendors, cleaners, manufacturing labourers etc. The third category is services and sales workers (15.0 percent), the majority of whom are probably involved in the tourism sector (hotel staff, bar men, waiters etc.). Managing directors, chief executives, legislators and senior officials are less than one percent (0.7 percent) of all occupations.
Of the rural population aged 15 years and above, almost six percent classify themselves as unemployed while in urban areas one out of ten persons are unemployed (9.8 percent). There are distinct age differences. In rural areas 13.3 percent of young people (aged 15 to 24 years) are unemployed and in urban areas it rises to almost one fifth (19.3 percent). The data shows that as people get older the tendency to call themselves unemployed decreases. Men are almost twice as likely as women to classify themselves as unemployed in all age ranges. The definition of unemployment used in HBS is different to that used in the Labour Force Survey so it is not surprising to see different results between these two key surveys.
HBS 2014/15 captured information on the type of activities and length of time spent on various home related activities. Almost a third (31.6 percent) of the population aged 5 and above spent time in the last 7 days preparing food for immediate consumption. It is a much more common activity among women, who on average spend 15 hours per week preparing food. As 69.0 percent of men are employed it is not surprising that their involvement in home based activities is lower than women's. Men are more likely to be involved in collecting firewood as their main activity whereby on average, they spent 9 hours a week while women were more likely in taking care of children, the sick and elderly. The spent on average of 16 hours a week in this activity. Generally in Zanzibar, about two of every five households (41.6 percent) run a business. Households in urban areas are more likely to run a business (55.4 percent) than rural areas (44.6 percent). Majority of households (68.4 percent) run only one business, just above a quarter of households have two or more businesses. Almost one third (29.9 percent) of household businesses in Zanzibar operate business in a dedicated space and 11.2 percent in a permanent building other than the respondent's home. Nearly all businesses have sole owners (92.7 percent) but a small proportion of business have a partnership (6.1 percent). About two third (66.5 percent) of the household stated that their own savings were the main source of business capital but only one of every ten business household (10.1 percent) used a gift from family as a capital for their business. Most of the business (85.3 percent) in Zanzibar are not registered. Only 5.0 percent of businesses pay VAT and a similar percentage for PAYER (4.8 percent). Rural and urban differences are small in terms of registration and taxpaying.
Overall 37.7 percent of households in HBS 2014/15 made at least one overnight trip in the last twelve months. About 75.0 percent of households made trips within Zanzibar and 51.9 percent of them are to Mjini and Magharibi. Almost one third (30.2 percent) of recent trips were made to Mainland Tanzania, Zanzibar Household Budget Survey 2014/15 xvi mainly to Dar es Salaam (61.7 percent). Of all of the most recent trips, only 1.3 percent are made abroad and most are to Kenya (40.3 percent). The biggest reason to travel is to visit friends (50.3 percent). The second reason is to attend a funeral or wedding (7.0 percent) and 4.2 percent mentioned that the reason for the trip was business. The main means of transport used to make the most recent trip was 54.7 percent by ferry or boat (54.7 percent) followed by public transport, own car and finally by air. In terms of the type of place respondents stayed for the trip by far the majority (85.2 percent) stayed in private homes and only 3.7 percent in hotels. |
