Modelling Welfare Transitions to Prioritise Sustainable Development Interventions in Coastal Kenya

Jacob Katuva, Rob Hope, Tim Foster, Johanna Koehler and Patrick Thomson
Additional contact information
Jacob Katuva: School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford University, Oxford OX1 2JD, UK
Rob Hope: School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford University, Oxford OX1 2JD, UK
Tim Foster: Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney, 235 Jones Street, Ultimo, NSW 2007, Australia
Johanna Koehler: School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford University, Oxford OX1 2JD, UK
Patrick Thomson: School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford University, Oxford OX1 2JD, UK

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 17, 1-22

Abstract: Welfare transitions are weakly understood in sub-Saharan Africa due to limited panel data to analyze trajectories of household escaping from, falling into, or remaining out of deprivation. We model data from 3500 households in coastal Kenya in three panels from 2014 to 2016 to evaluate determinants of welfare by multidimensional and subjective measures. Findings indicate that more than half of the households are deprived, with female-headed households being the most vulnerable and making the least progress. The subjective welfare measure identified three times more chronically poor households than the multidimensional metric (27% vs. 9%); in contrast, the multidimensional metric estimated twice as many ‘never poor’ households than the subjective measure (39% vs. 16%). The ‘churning poor’ were broadly consistent for both measures at roughly half the sample. Four welfare priorities converged from modelling welfare transitions. Broadening access to secondary education and energy services, improving the reliability and proximity of drinking water services, and ending open defecation improve welfare outcomes. While the policy implications do not align neatly with Kenya’s national and county government mandates, we argue that prioritising fewer but targeted sustainable development goals may improve accountability, feasibility, and responsibility in delivery if informed by local priorities and political salience.

Keywords: Kenya; multidimensional welfare; subjective welfare; sustainable development goals; welfare transitions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/17/6943/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/17/6943/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:17:p:6943-:d:404437

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().