The Influence of Ill Health on Chronic and Transient Poverty: Evidence from Uganda, CPRC Working Paper No. 41

Abstract

The paper uses nationally representative household panel data to investigate if ill health is important in influencing poverty persistence and transitions in Uganda, a country that was both at the centre of Africa's HIV/AIDS pandemic and experienced impressive poverty reduction during the 1990's. Through a combined discrete choice and micro growth level approach we find that ill health and long term sickness, such as that associated with HIV/AIDS, is particularly associated with households moving into poverty. However, households affected by ill health also experience larger land and livestock reductions, providing some support for participatory evidence that has found land and asset sales to be a major coping mechanism for Uganda's poor