Beyond Herd Size: Livestock Assets, Paid Work, and Household Welfare across Rural, Urban, and Nomadic Somalia

Abstract Livestock underpins food-system livelihoods across Somalia, yet larger herds may not translate uniformly into household economic welfare when market access, paid work, mobility, and shock exposure differ across livelihood settings. This study examines how livestock assets and complementary paid work relate to consumption-based welfare among livestock-keeping households and whether these relationships vary across rural, urban, and nomadic populations. Using the 2022 Somalia Integrated Household Budget Survey, we identify 2,523 livestock-keeping households, of which 2,502 link to the official welfare aggregate. Livestock holdings are standardized as Tropical Livestock Units (TLU). Household-weighted log-linear models estimate associations with real per-capita expenditure; poverty status provides a secondary outcome, while residence interactions test livelihood-system heterogeneity. In the fully adjusted national model, ln(TLU + 1) was not independently associated with welfare (1.1%; 95% CI -2.2 to 4.5; p = 0.528), whereas household access to paid work in the preceding week was associated with 10.6% higher expenditure (95% CI 2.1 to 19.8; p = 0.013) and lower odds of poverty (OR 0.74; 95% CI 0.59 to 0.92; p = 0.007). The livestock asset-welfare association was positive among rural households (6.2%; 95% CI 1.4 to 11.2; p = 0.010) but not among urban or nomadic households. These findings show that livestock capital cannot be interpreted as a uniform proxy for current welfare across Somalia's livestock-based food system. Strengthening dryland livelihoods requires combining productive-asset protection with differentiated labor, market-access, mobility, and risk-management strategies.