Livestock holdings during and after 2011 drought in Ethiopia: Heterogeneous responses and livestock types

Livestock have long been considered as a buffer stock, though recent studies on asset smoothing suggest that the extent of use of livestock sale as self-insurance bifurcates between the asset rich (i.e., those with an abundance of livestock to sustain their livelihoods) and the asset poor (i.e., those without enough livestock). Using two-period panel surveys of rural Ethiopia, this paper extends the discussion of the asset dynamics bifurcation by disaggregating rainfall shocks into drought- and flood-related ones. My empirical analysis implies that the asset rich sold their small livestock in the face of below-normal rainfalls, though the asset poor did not. Faced with above-normal rainfall shocks, on the other hand, the asset poor depleted their livestock. I discuss possible explanations for these results.