Seasonal Deprivation in the Sahel Is Large, Widespread, and Can Be Anticipated

Shocks and seasonality may have profound effects on poor households’ wellbeing, especially in contexts like the Sahel where livelihoods depend on rainfed agriculture and pastoralism. Understanding how seasonal variation affects Sahelian households is therefore essential for guiding policies that jointly seek to address chronic poverty, seasonality, and unexpected shocks. This paper uses harmonized household survey data from Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Niger, and Senegal, collected in two distinct waves in 2018 and 2019, to examine the extent of seasonal deprivation in the Sahel. These data reveal significant seasonal variation in poverty and wellbeing. Mean real monetary consumption is around 10.5 percent lower in the lean season. Moreover, rather than representing a reduction in dietary diversity, this drop is concentrated in staple foods (especially cereals), implying that seasonality brings about extreme forms of deprivation. Welfare losses may begin early in the lean season, even as early as April. When the data were collected in 2018/19, the climatic conditions were relatively benign and the security situation was more stable than today, so the effects of seasonality shown in this paper likely represent a lower bound. On policy, although initiatives currently focus on responding to unpredictable shocks, seasonal food insecurity could be better tackled by expanding social protection and providing regular transfers early in the lean season, when prices are lower and fewer households have succumbed to extreme deprivation. Seasonal variation happens every year and more can be done to support Sahelian households if there is information on how it will perennially threaten their wellbeing.