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What happened to Kenya from 1998 or so to make its poverty rate rise?

  • So I'm going to Kenya in 5 weeks time for some work, and I'm meant to be briefing some colleagues (emphasis on brief) about some aspects of our work tomorrow. Something has leapt out at me, and I don't have the time to research it myself before presenting. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=kenya+human+development+index+1980-2013 over time. The trend is clearly upwards, which, essentially, should mean that the country is "improving" on a range of measures. However, several different sources of data paint a very different picture with regards to poverty rates in Kenya. http://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/SI.POV.DDAY/compare?country=ke. As you can see, the percentage of people living on $1.25 a day was headed down down down until around 1998 - something happens, and it starts racing back up there. My question: what happened? So far as I can tell, it wasn't just inflation (which would have blown a hole in the currency one way or another). Was it the impact of AIDS? Refugee flows from Somalia and Sudan? Something else? The health indicators dipped briefly but started recovering (which I put down to AIDS); all the other Human development indices kept improving. What is this, and why has the HDI increased despite the number of people living in poverty really grown a lot? Important Note: guesses are fine, but they must be qualified, better yet referenced. I have plenty of my own uninformed opinion to go on; I require no more. Please don't use the question to play geopolitical Wheel of Fortune. Thank you in advance.

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    Yeah, I'm not sure I'd draw that conclusion from the data you've cited. The HDI dataset seems to be much richer and, as you point out, it's clearly trending up. Furthermore, you'll notice that the poverty rate data you cite only has one data point after 1998 - so all you can really say is that something happened between 1998 and 2004 to increase poverty, not in 1998 specifically. If you even credit the significance of that one data point. In that timeframe I guess I'd be inclined to blame political instability due to the presidential transition in late 2002 / early 2003. When I was there in 1998-99, there was a feeling that everyone was biding their time until the manifestly corrupt old guard got forced out by term limits. From what my friends told me later, people ended up being bitterly disappointed when Mwai Kibaki turned out to be roughly as corrupt as Moi, and so that "new dawn" didn't really play out so well and it could've had some of those impacts. I might also consider a different sampling mix and / or the expansion of the Somalia problem (i.e., the fact that Somalia is a failed state) - that border is particularly porous and despite the clear line on a map, Somalia and all its problems bleed over into Kenya quite significantly in Eastern province. I'm not familiar with Somali history and politics of that time so I won't guess further whether it got a lot worse in 1998-2004 specifically. However, I would not blame AIDS for an increase in poverty at that particular time - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_in_Kenya: "Kenya has a severe, generalized HIV epidemic, but in recent years, the country has experienced a notable decline in HIV prevalence, attributed in part to significant behavioral change and increased access to ART. National adult HIV prevalence is estimated to have fallen from 10 percent in the late 1990s to about 6.1 percent in 2005."

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Without error bars/uncertainties, and with only a single data point showing a rise, I don't see compelling evidence for the premise of the question. Do you have any other examples?

caek

I know I'm not answering your question, but such a counterintuitive, surprising premise needs to be better supported by evidence. Unless I'm missing something, all that article tells you is that the poverty rate fell between 2000 and 2005, and has been flat since. It doesn't mention the 90s. (And your example link in the OP says, "poverty rates for individual countries cannot be compared with poverty rates reported in earlier editions", so comparing the absolute values in the article to the numbers on the chart you originally linked is dubious.)

caek

KokuRyu

I agree, Caek it may not be the case, but there has definitely been a rise since the nineties - there's an http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Kenya-poverty-level-constant-for-six-years/-/539546/1402060/-/cwlbe3/-/index.html here which talks about it, though I can't find those stats from the world bank's site myself - they don't archive it. The rise is real, there's little doubt of that. What I'm wondering now is if the dip was real or is exaggerated. It coincides with arguably the lowest point of foreign aid to Kenya. The kicker is though, is why have those other indicators all improved then? They would typically be a lot shakier if this was the case.

smoke

The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldenberg_scandal pumped a lot of money out of the government.

borkencode

at

Coffee boomed in the eighties and then went bust around this time as well - seems like there is no single one right answer but a number of market forces acting upon the population at the same time. Right now they're on their way to middle income status, quite comfortably. Their biggest advantage is the youth bulge with average age of 15 and free primary education so there's 85% literacy and reasonable spread of English.

infini

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