Agroclimatic shock, income inequality, and poverty: Evidence from Burkina Faso

This paper examines the impacts of agroclimatic shock on income inequality and poverty, using household-farm data from three agroecological zones of Burkina Faso together with income-source decompositions of the Gini coefficient and the Foster-Greer-Thorbecke poverty index before and after a severe drought. Our findings reveal that, because the poor lack acces to off-farm income, off-farm income increases inequality and fails to shield poor households against agroclimatic risks. The direction of the empirical relationship between changes in inequality and poverty after the drought depends critically on environmental variables and on apparent constraints on income diversification at different points in the income distribution. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd