across the surveys, with a particularly strong decline between 1986 and 1987. They reweighted the sample to correct this bias.<sup>9</sup> However, it is entirely possible that the reweighting scheme based on household size did not correct for other sampling biases which could have resulted in non-poor households being oversampled in 1985 and 1986 in West Forest.

An indication that there may have been other sampling problems in West Forest emerges from the comparison of the incidence of poverty in 1987 in the West Forest clusters that were retained from the 1986 sample and those that were added **_in_** 1987 to replace the ones that dropped out. The new clusters added in 1987 had three times the incidence of poverty as the old clusters. This was not just the case of high poverty clusters in 1987 replacing high poverty clusters in 1986: the clusters that were dropped from the 1986 sample did not exhibit a higher incidence of poverty in 1986 relative to the ones that were retained. While not conclusive, the difference in the incidence of poverty between the two sets of clusters suggests that there may have been some bias in the sampling design at some point.

The survey results for the Savannah are also somewhat surprising. While export crop farmers at least in the East Forest seemed to have been protected from the worst of the recession in 1987 and 1988, Savannah farmers did not fare so well. Mean expenditures per capita declined around 30 percent between 1985 and 1988 among both export and food crop farmers, although export crop farmers suffered a larger drop in farm income than food crop farmers. The production of cotton, the main export crop of the region, increased substantially over this period (table 7), so even with the real decline in cotton prices, the large decrease in mean household expenditures and farm income among export crop farmers in the Savannah is somewhat surprising.

Table 7 **Cotton Production: National Estimates and Household Survey Results**

||_Nation_|_al Estimates_|||_Survey Resul_|_ts_||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|_Campaign_<br>_year_|_Production_<br>_(1000_**_t)_**|_Production_<br>_index_<br>_(1984/85=100)_|_Survey_<br>_year_|_Production per_<br>_capita (cotton-_<br>_growing_<br>_households)_|_Production_<br>_per capita_<br>_(all_<br>_households)_|_Cotton_<br>_growing_<br>_population as_<br>_share of_<br>_survey_<br>_population_|_Production_<br>_Index_|
|1984-85|212.0|100|1985|222|19.1|8.6|100|
|1985-86|189.3|89|1986|338|24.3|7.2|127|
|1986-87|213.5|101|1987|287|34.2|11.9|179|
|1987-88|255.8|121|1988|254|27.7|10.9|145|
|1988-89|290.4|137||||||
|1989-90|241.7|114||||||
|1990-91|261.1|123||||||
|1991-92|193.8|91||||||
|1992-93|238.8|113|1993|310|16.7|5.4|87|
|1993-94|258.3|122||||||
|1994-95|209.0|99|1995|374|16.1|4.3|84|

# Accelerating increase in poverty, 1988-1993

As the economic recession deepened between 1988 and 1993, poverty in CMte d'Ivoire more than doubled. The increase was particularly strong in Abidjan, where poverty increased tenfold. With the large increase in poverty in Abidjan and to a lesser extent in Other Cities, the contribution of urban areas to the headcount index of poverty increased by more than 60 percent between 1988 and 1993 9 The poverty results for 1985-1988 presented in this paper take account of the reweighting scheme proposed by Demery and Grootaert (1993).

10