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How Social Status Contributes to Sustainable Livelihoods? An Empirical Analysis in Ethiopia

Author

Listed:
  • Aradom Gebrekidan Abbay

    (College of Business and Economics, Mekelle University, 231 Mekelle, Ethiopia)

  • Roel Rutten

    (School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Tilburg University, 90153 5000 Tilburg, The Netherlands)

  • Hossein Azadi

    (Department of Geography, Ghent University, 9000 Ghent, Belgium
    ISUMADECIP, Faculty of Environmental Science and Engineering, Babeş-Bolyai University, 400084 Cluj-Napoca, Romania)

  • Frank Witlox

    (Department of Geography, Ghent University, 9000 Ghent, Belgium
    Department of Geography, University of Tartu, 50090 Tartu, Estonia
    College of Civil Aviation, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China)

Abstract

This paper scrutinized the links between social status and income of rural households to provide insight into how social status is indicated and used as a strategy for improving livelihood income. It also provides a brief look into some selected key determinants of livelihood income. We applied a two-stage least-squares estimation to household-level data from rural areas in the Tigray regional state of Ethiopia. We also proposed the latent class analysis model to identify the number of classes for the variable “social status”. The results indicate that livelihood income is significantly affected by households’ social status, indicating that high status household heads tend to enhance their participation in different social networks with the intention of strengthening the social bonds that they have and improving their status in the community, which in turn has an economic payback. Apart from this, household heads’ access to off-farm work, size of owned land, exposure to multimedia, livestock ownership and spatial proximity to towns were the variables that have significant positive effects on livelihood income.

Suggested Citation

  • Aradom Gebrekidan Abbay & Roel Rutten & Hossein Azadi & Frank Witlox, 2018. "How Social Status Contributes to Sustainable Livelihoods? An Empirical Analysis in Ethiopia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(1), pages 1-24, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2018:i:1:p:68-:d:192694
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    References listed on IDEAS

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