when food should be abundant, as many as 4.8 million people were severely food insecure (FAO and WFP, 2017). By mid‐2018, the number of severely food insecure people is expected to rise to 6.2 million, reaching more than half of the total population.<sup>34</sup>

**Table 1: Poverty headcount and average consumption per strata for the seven HFS covered states, 2016.**

||**Po**<br>**Mean**|**verty headco**<br>**Standard**<br>**Error**|**unt rati**<br>**[95**|**o**<br>**% CI]**|**Mean**|**Mean con**<br>**Standard**<br>**Error**|**sumption**<br>**[95%**|**CI]**|**N**|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|National|0.83|0.01|0.80|0.86|73.30|2.68|67.99|78.60|1,848|
|Rural|0.86|0.02|0.83|0.89|67.36|2.70|62.03|72.70|1,281|
|Urban|0.65|0.02|0.60|0.70|113.99|5.59|102.94|125.05|567|
|Warrap|0.86|0.05|0.77|0.95|63.98|7.13|49.88|78.08|135|
|Northern Bahr El||||||||||
|Ghazal|0.90|0.03|0.84|0.95|62.63|5.64|51.49|73.77|299|
|Western Bahr El||||||||||
|Ghazal|0.90|0.02|0.87|0.94|60.17|6.33|47.66|72.68|310|
|Lakes|0.84|0.02|0.80|0.88|71.22|3.46|64.38|78.06|232|
|Western Equatoria|0.53|0.04|0.46|0.61|130.51|7.45|115.79|145.23|300|
|Central Equatoria|0.80|0.05|0.70|0.90|86.53|8.27|70.18|102.88|311|
|Eastern Equatoria|0.95|0.01|0.93|0.98|43.88|3.58|36.80|50.96|261|

_Note: Standard errors estimated through linear regressions; all estimates weighted using population weights._

# **Source: Authors’ own calculations based on HFS 2016‐2017 data.**

The incidence of poverty is much more widespread in rural areas compared to urban areas. Rural poverty was equal to 86 percent in 2016 compared to 65 percent in urban areas (p<0.001, Figure 5). The rural poor also experience deeper poverty than urban residents, with a higher poverty gap and poverty severity. In 2016, the urban poverty gap was equal to 31 percent compared to 50 percent for the rural poverty gap (p<0.001, Figure 5). A similar pattern can be observed for poverty severity, the urban severity index was equal to 19 percent and the rural index equal to 33 percent (p<0.001). A stochastic dominance analysis based on a comparison of the cumulative consumption expenditure distribution across rural and urban areas reveals that this is not due to the chosen poverty line but that at any point along the distribution the urban consumption expenditure curve lies consistently below the rural curve (Figure 5). The isolated nature of many rural areas contributes to these observed poverty rates, given that they are often cut off from public services as well as humanitarian assistance.

Measuring inequality, the Gini index in South Sudan declined from 2009 to 2016, from about 0.47 in 2009 to 0.41 in 2016 (Figure 4).<sup>35</sup> The average Gini index for countries in Sub‐Saharan Africa is approximately 0.44, with South Sudan at 0.41 indicating slightly lower inequality but higher inequality compared to the global average Gini index of 0.38. While all households suffered consumption losses because of the conflict and macroeconomic crises, the consumption losses experienced by better off households were larger than those of the poorer households (World Bank, 2018). Thus, the driver of the reduction in inequality was not pro‐poor growth but rather a greater decline in welfare for wealthier households relative to poorer households. This is not entirely unexpected since the poorer households already experienced extreme deprivation, and thus could not fall much further even as the crisis worsened. Inequality remains nevertheless greater in urban areas than in rural areas though only slightly, at 0.41

> 34 FEWSNET Food Security Outlook, February to September 2018.

> 35 The Gini index is calculated from the area under the Lorenz curve, which plots the cumulative percentage of consumption expenditure against the cumulative percentage of the population, with perfect equality lying along the 45‐degree line.

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