How Does Disability Influence Multidimensional Poverty in Afghanistan?

Abstract

This research aims to analyze the relationship between Disability and Multidimensional Poverty in Afghanistan, by using the Alkire and Foster model and a dataset from a household survey conducted in 17 provinces of Afghanistan (2013). For this purpose, nine dimensions namely education, employment, healthcare, monetary income, social inclusion, love and care, psychological wellbeing, family assets, and personal autonomy were taken into account to calculate deprivation scores and then a set of multidimensional poverty measures (MPM). Some indicators namely physical safety, health wellbeing, and insurance which are commonly included for MPM were not available. This research estimates deprivation score for different population characteristics such as gender, age groups, disability types, provinces and ethnicity, and asset index quantiles. We also estimated OLS, Probit and Logit models for the effects of age, gender, marital status, and disability types on the deprivation score of people with disability. The results indicate that females with disability might be more deprived than males with disability, and older people with disability are more deprived than younger people with disability. Furthermore, married people with disability have a lower deprivation score than unmarried people with disability. People with intellectual and multiple disabilities had higher deprivation scores than people with physical disability, but people with epilepsy had lower deprivation scores than people with physical disability. Finally, there were no significant difference between people with hearing, visual, mental, and physical disability. Logit and Probit regression results all showed that female with disability were more likely to be multidimensionality poor. Similarly, older people with disability were more possibly to be poor than youths with disability. Furthermore, the multidimensional poverty likelihood of persons with hearing, intellectual, and multiple disabilities were more than persons with other types of disability