Yisak Tafere

• PhD
• Researcher at Young Lives, Oxford University

What enables social capital to contribute to sustained poverty escapes, and what could compensate for the negative effects of adverse social norms that inhibit pathways out of poverty? This paper seeks to answer these questions in Ethiopia by analysing three rounds of the Ethiopian Socioeconomic Survey (2011/12, 2013/14, and 2015/16) alongside fiel...

Despite increasing attention to the relationship between children’s socio-emotional learning (SEL), mental health and well-being and their education in the Global South, less attention has been given to the implications for girls’ education and gender equality specifically. In this paper, we start to address this gap drawing on evidence from the RI...

Over the past two and a half decades, significant progress has been made in relation to girls' education in Ethiopia. However, challenges remain, particularly in terms of girls' progression, completion, and learning, with girls in more rural and remote areas facing the greatest difficulties. Drawing on data from the RISE Ethiopia qualitative study,...

Despite important strides in the fight against poverty in the past two decades, child poverty remains widespread and persistent, particularly in Africa. Poverty in all its dimensions is detrimental for early childhood development and leads to often unreversed damage for the lives of girls and boys, locking children and families into intergeneration...

Food insecurity, the state of being without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of safe, nutritious food, is a persistent problem in rural Ethiopia. However, little qualitative research has explored how food insecurity affects children over time, from their point of view. What are the effects of economic ‘shocks’ such as illness, death, loss o...

This working paper discusses educational trajectories and gendered outcomes in early adulthood in Ethiopia. It is based on the Young Lives longitudinal study of a cohort of children born in 1994, the year when the first educational policy that set out the subsequent expansion of formal schooling in Ethiopia was launched. Young Lives research has sh...

The global market, variable agricultural production and irregular trading practices have marked food price volatility in Ethiopia over the last decade. However, the recent decline in global prices of food and fuel, coupled with state intervention in managing the supply of consumer goods, have brought some stability to food prices in 2014/15. While...

Drawing on three rounds of survey and qualitative data of the Young Lives study in Ethiopia among children born in 1994 and their caregivers, this article investigates intergenerational relationships by means of the life course perspective. With the expansion of modern education and children’s exposure to different experiences outside the family, m...

This paper presents educational aspirations of children living in poor communities in Ethiopia. Using Young Lives survey and qualitative longitudinal data, this article establishes that children hold high educational aspirations. The findings contest at least two widely held assumptions. First, poor people have a low-level of aspiration and therefo...

In recent decades, children’s time has become a global commodity, fought over by a range of national and international policymakers (Stephens 1995). Ambitious global social policies construct particular visions of childhood and, in doing so, shape how children spend their time. The Millennium Development Goals, the Education For All Dakar Goals, Wo...

This chapter explores the transition from childhood to young adulthood in Ethiopia, and particularly the role of changing norms regarding mutual expectations and obligations between children and parents, in order to better understand youth life-course poverty.

This paper presents children’s experiences and perceptions of poverty. It draws on survey and qualitative data from the Young Lives study of poor children in Ethiopia. Through group exercises, discussions and interviews, children and young people aged 13-17 collectively and individually provided their perceptions of the causes, indicators and conse...

This article explores divergent perspectives on female early marriage and genital modification in Ethiopia. It contrasts international norms and research evidence with local understandings, the latter focusing on the part these practices play in securing family social heritage, well-being of girls, and their transition to adulthood. The article exp...

This article examines three social protection interventions from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Peru, and discusses the extent to which they effectively integrate a gender perspective to address poverty and vulnerability. All three case studies have important design features aiming to tackle gender inequalities in both the economic and social spheres, w...

The paper explores the perspectives of caregivers and other adults on the nature and timing of childhood transitions, elicited through group discussions in five Ethiopian communities, as reflective of the community norms that shape childhood transitions. The paper uses data from Young Lives, a longitudinal study of children growing up in poverty, t...

Introduction After involvement in an internal conflict for two decades, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) overthrew the Derg regime (1974-91). The EPRDF army as a national defence force replaced the army that served in the Derg government and a programme was launched to facilitate the return of the exsoldiers to civilian...

Worldwide there have been many studies about understandings of well-being (reviewed in Alkire, 2002; Camfield, 2006), i.e. what constitutes and contributes to a life that people have reason to value in particular contexts.1 As we have seen in Chapters 2 and 3 of this book, concepts and even domains of well-being may vary across different contexts o...

Participatory research into how people living in material poverty define and experience well-being and ill-being is increasingly common in developed and developing countries. Such research highlights the importance of experiential aspects, such as being respected and able to preserve one's dignity, and having meaningful choices. Nevertheless, these...