Productive Safety Nets Program and Household Level Graduation in Drought-Prone Areas of the Amhara Region of Ethiopia: A Case Study in Lay Gaint District

Even though the governments of Ethiopia in successive eras had implemented different policies, strategies and programs to alleviate poverty and food insecurity, still millions of people are dependent on food handouts for many decades. The general objective of the study was therefore; to identify the constraints faced the safety net beneficiaries by using Lay Gaint district as a case study site. Questionnaire survey, key informants interview and focus group discussions were employed to collect the primary data. A total of 201 households were covered by the questionnaire survey. The study revealed that 56% of the sample households were safety nets beneficiaries. About 82% of the sample households were disappointed for the criteria used in the selection of the beneficiaries because of inclusion and exclusion errors. The majority of the poor (61.1% of respondents) who is the subject of the program were not clear to the selection criteria employed. Almost all the sample households informed that there was blurred information about graduation in general and the time of graduation in particular. The binary logistic regression results showed that households total income, livestock owned, total crop production, kilocalorie intake and geographical location were significant variables used to predict households’ graduation from safety nets. These call upon government officials to put considerable efforts in creating awareness to the benchmark used and the time of graduation from the safety nets.