Essays on Development and Household Welfare in Ethiopia: Evidence on Women’s Empowerment, Child Health and Education, and Food Security

In developing countries, the welfare of small-holder households is susceptible to multiple and unpredictable factors. Particularly in Ethiopia, the lack of well-developed institutions, recurrent climate shocks, and persistent armed conflicts remain major challenges to improving household welfare. In the household members, women and children are the vulnerable groups, facing the greater impact of the absence of well-developed institutions, recurrent climate shocks, and persistent armed conflicts. The main institutional challenge comes from the inadequate protection of land property rights, particularly for women, which Ethiopia targeted to improve through an extensive land registration and certification program. It is imperative to evaluate the impact of this program on women's intrahousehold bargaining power under the collective household model setting. Climate variability further threatens household livelihoods and has enduring consequences for children, especially in resource-constrained families with limited capacity to adapt. Understanding the effect of early childhood exposure to drought on long-term child outcomes, examining the role of support programs, and exploring the mechanisms of the effect gives insight into policy responses. In addition, the growing frequency of conflicts poses a serious risk to food security by disrupting food production and affecting the distribution channels. In general, this dissertation comprises three interrelated chapters that examine (i) land certification and women’s intra-household bargaining power, (ii) climate shocks and child well-being, and (iii) conflict and food security. In the first chapter of this dissertation analyses the impact of joint land titling certification on women's intrahousehold bargaining power. We estimate the resource share rule between the wife and husband, which measures intrahousehold bargaining power. The identification of the sharing rule is based on the assignable goods and distribution factors. We used the LSMA-ISA three-round data from Ethiopia. The estimation of the demand system shows that among the distribution factors, the age ratio of the wife and having a child aged less than five have a negative effect on the wife's resource sharing process. From the estimated resource share, we observed that there exists significant inequality in control over household resources, with the husband taking the majority of household resources, leaving little for the wife's share. Using the estimated resource share of a wife, we measured the impact of having land titling certification on the wife's bargaining power. The fixed effect estimation result confirms the significant impact of joint land certification on the wife's bargaining power, measured by relative resource share. However, land certification issued under the household head alone does not significantly improve the wife's bargaining power. A robustness check using Mundlak correlated random effect and instrumental variable estimation confirms the positive impact of land certification on a wife's intrahousehold bargaining power. \noindent In the second chapter, we examine the long-term impact of early-life drought exposure on child health and school attainment. In this analysis we used the Young Lives longitudinal dataset, covering five survey rounds for both the younger and older cohorts. Drought exposure is identified based on the child’s place and time of birth, using the Standardized Precipitation and Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) as a measure of drought shock. The estimation results show that exposure to drought during early childhood has a significant and adverse effect on children’s height-for-age z (HAZ) scores. Drought shocks occurring during the pre-pregnancy and postnatal periods also exert a strong negative impact on HAZ. Moreover, the result indicates that early-life drought has a persistent effect of increasing the likelihood of stunting and severe stunting of a child. Early drought shock exposure also has a negative effect on schooling by reducing years of schooling and contributing to delays in time to start school. Among the trimesters in utero, drought exposure in the second trimester appears to have the most adverse effect on long-term child outcomes. Moreover, the result from gender disaggregated estimation shows that the effect of drought exposure is more severe on boys. The support program, Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP), is found to be ineffective in mitigating the negative impact of early-life drought exposure. One of the mechanisms through which early-life drought shocks exert their effects is the reduction in women’s dietary diversity. \noindent The third chapter examines the impact of armed conflict on household dietary diversity in Ethiopia. In recent years, Ethiopia has been engulfed in a devastating civil conflict, leading to severe humanitarian crises and disruptions in economic activity. The analysis employs the two most recent rounds of the Ethiopian LSMS-ISA data, merged with conflict data from the ACLED registry. Conflict exposure is measured based on defined geographic boundaries surrounding each household’s location. The estimation result indicates a significant negative effect of conflict exposure, measured within 3 km, 5 km, and 10 km radii around each household, on household dietary diversity scores. Moreover, household dietary diversity declines with increasing conflict intensity, as measured by the number of fatalities in conflict events. Consistent with fixed effect results, the alternative estimation method using propensity score matching me, we found a negative impact of conflict on food security. Rising food prices are identified as one of the key mechanisms through which conflict adversely affects household dietary diversity.