Can Household Diversification Strategies Reduce Multidimensional Poverty Under Fragility? Evidence from Rural Afghanistan

Countries experiencing prolonged conflict and economic isolation face severe constraints on designing poverty reduction policies. In such settings, household-level diversification is often promoted as a pathway to resilience, yet credible evidence on its effectiveness remains limited. Using household survey data, this paper examines whether livelihood and crop diversification are associated with lower multidimensional poverty in rural Afghanistan, a highly fragile and data-constrained context. 1 The findings indicate that livelihood and crop diversifications are associated with a lower likelihood of households being multidimensionally poor, though the magnitude and statistical reliability of these associations vary across diversification strategies. Besides diversification strategies, household and locational characteristics affect multidimensional poverty, suggesting that diversification alone is inadequate to reduce poverty. The findings highlight both the potential and the limits of diversification as a poverty reduction strategy under fragility. While focused on Afghanistan, the analysis speaks more broadly to debates on household adjustment and poverty dynamics in fragile economies.