War Aggravating Poverty: A Case of Angola

Subtitle:Civil War as a Major Cause of Poverty Using Data from Angola Although there is a large body of research devoted to the investigation of the causes of poverty, none of these studies have treated and modeled war as the main contributing factor to an impoverished welfare in the fragile states. This study observes that war aggravates poverty. This is shown in three ways. First, a temporal poverty profile is constructed for two periods 1995/96 and 2000/2001 using the Household Budget Surveys data. Results indicate that poverty increased over time. Secondly, the use of a path diagram is applied to shed some light on the effects of war on welfare determinants. This method throws some insight on how war affects negatively the welfare determinants directly or indirectly. Thirdly, ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions are implemented. The OLS results are that war decreases the mean consumption per adult equivalent and it increases the poverty incidence level. The findings from this study are useful to both policy and decision makers prior, during and in post- conflict periods.