Notes: Urban observations only. Adult defined as 25 years old or more. Omitted categories: Below 2.15 USD-a-day. Robust standard errors clustered at the subnational geographic units between brackets. *** significant at 1%, ** 5%, * 10%.

_Which coping mechanisms were used by which kinds of urban households that own enterprises?_ Turning to the use of coping strategies, Table 8 shows results from an analysis of the correlates of household and household head characteristics and coping strategies. Information on coping strategies differed across surveys. As a result, the sample used to estimate each type of coping strategy differs. Asset sales were only reported for Ethiopia and Nigeria. Private and public assistance cash and in-kind transfers were also reported in Malawi. Sierra Leone’s survey also includes information on receiving any kind of support from any source.

**Households owning non-farm enterprises were less likely to use any coping strategy from any source, as compared to those that did not own an enterprise.** Table 8 shows that households owning a non-farm businesses were roughly 8 percentage points less likely to employ any coping strategy as compared to households that do not own enterprises. The estimate is similar when using the household head definition, though not statistically significant. Households owning farm enterprises are not statistically different than non-enterprise owners in their use of coping strategies from any source. These patterns are consistent with the unconditional estimates, which showed very small difference in means.

**There is a weak correlation between owning a farm business and selling assets, unlike households owning non-farm businesses.** Households that owned a farm business – perhaps by the household head or perhaps through another household member – were 3 percentage points more likely to sell assets than households that do not own an enterprise. The correlation is only significant at the 10 percent level (Table 8). The trends may reflect greater ownership of sellable assets in farm business households that are not captured by the poverty status controls. Selfemployed owners of farm or non-farm businesses were no more or less likely than wage employees to sell assets.

**Households with and without enterprises have a similar incidence of receiving aid from public or private sources** when these sources are considered separately. Households owning farm and non-farm enterprises generally have a lower probability of accessing private or public assistance as compared to those households without an enterprise. However, the point estimates are very small, not exceeding 1 percentage point for most of the correlations, and not statistically significant.<sup>33</sup> The estimates are not statistically significant for self-employed household heads.

**The use of coping strategies does not differ by gender or household welfare, with some discernable trends by age of the household head.** Adults were 9.9 percentage points more likely to receive public assistance than were self-employed youth. They were more likely to access all kinds of assistance, though the difference is not statistically significant. The receipt of public assistance increases with wealth while asset sales decline for both households with enterprises and

> 33 When limiting the sample to the sector of employment (agriculture or non-agriculture) of the household head, several correlates become statistically significant at the 5 percent level: farm households are less likely to receive public assistance while non-farm businesses are less likely to receive any assistance.

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