Poverty and intersecting crises in Madagascar: Quantitative insights

Madagascar faces one of the world’s most complex crisis environments, where climate-related disasters, recurrent economic shocks, and political instability intersect to shape persistent and widespread poverty. The country’s national poverty rate stood at 75.2% of the population in 2022, a slight increase from 73% a decade earlier in 2012 (EPM, 2012; EPM, 2022). It has the world’s highest rate of extreme poverty (UNICEF, 2023). Droughts – particularly in the Grand Sud – combine with cyclones and floods to erode livelihoods, while economic crises related to price volatility, revenue losses, and the long-lasting impacts of COVID-19 further depress household welfare.

This paper examines climate-related disasters (droughts and floods) and economic shocks and stressors – against a backdrop of other crises including conflict and political violence – to assess their relationship with household poverty in Madagascar. This work is part of a broader working paper series on intersecting crises and poverty in different country contexts (e.g. see Diwakar and Brzezinska, 2023)

Available at: https://doi.org/10.55158/DEEPWP40