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Ethiopia's agriculture is predominantly rainfed and hence any irregularity in weather conditions has adverse welfare implications. Using panel data, this paper analyzes the effect of rainfall shocks on Ethiopian rural households' food security and vulnerability over time while controlling for a range of other factors. To this end, we generated a time-variant household food security index which is developed by principal components analysis. Based on the scores of the index, households were classified into relative food security groups and their socioeconomic differences were assessed. The exploratory results show that compared to the less secured households, the more secured ones have male and literate household heads, tend to have a greater number of economically active household members, own more livestock, experience better rainfall outcome, participate in equb (a local savings group), and use chemical fertilizer. Fixed effects regression was used to identify the factors which affect the score's variability and the results indicate that rainfall shock is an important factor affecting households' food security over time. It is also noted that household size, head's age, participation in equb, off-farm activities, use of fertilizer, and livestock ownership positively and significantly affect the food security score. Results from multinomial logistic regression model reinforce the fixed effects regression results by showing the strong association of persistent food insecurity and vulnerability with adverse rainfall shock. A number of conclusions can be drawn from the results which are useful for policymakers as well as for agencies that engage in areas of risk and food security.

This study examines the effects of weather shock on households’ decision to engage in different types of off-farm work in rural Ethiopia. A multinomial logit model is applied to household data collected in 1999 and 2004. The regression results show that the level and variability of rainfall has a significant effect on the decision by households to engage in any type of off-farm work. The probability of a household deciding to participate in low-return, off-farm activities increases with lower levels and higher variability of rainfall, suggesting that households engage in those activities as a strategy for coping with adverse weather shock. Contrary to this, we find that participation in high-return activities increases with the level of rainfall and tends to decrease with rainfall variability, suggesting a strong correlation between off-farm activities and agricultural production.