Climate Volatility and Poverty Vulnerability in Tanzania

Climate volatility will increase in the future, with agricultural productivity expected to become increasingly volatile as well. For Tanzania, where food production and prices are sensitive to the climate, rising climate volatility can have severe implications for poverty. We develop and use an integrated framework to estimate the poverty vulnerabilities of different socio-economic strata in Tanzania under current and future climate. We find that households across various strata are similarly vulnerable to being impoverished when considered in terms of their stratum’s populations, with poverty vulnerability of all groups higher in the 21st Century than in the late 20th Century. When the contributions of the different strata to the national poverty changes are taken into account, the rural and urban households with diversified income sources are found to account for the largest poverty changes due to their large shares in initial total poverty.