sector employment over the same period (World Bank, 1995). Private consumption per capita fell by 31 percent between 1987 and 1995, consistent with the 35 percent fall in household expenditure per capita over the same period as measured by the household surveys.

Due to four years of C6te d'Ivoire Living Standards Survey (CILSS) data between 1985 and 1988 and two Priority Household Surveys (PHS) conducted in 1993 and 1995, it is possible to trace the evolution of poverty during this period of severe economic recession in C6te d'lvoire, although the differences in the two types of surveys raise questions about comparability of the poverty estimates across surveys.<sup>4</sup> In 1985, the headcount index of poverty in C6te d'Ivoire was 11 percent based on the extreme poverty line of 75,000 CFAF per capita per year adopted by Grootaert (1996) shown in table 2. The 75,000 CFAF poverty line is close to the one dollar per day poverty line used in the 1990 World Development Report.<sup>5</sup> Between 1985 and 1993, poverty almost tripled, with almost three-fourths of the 26 percentage point increase occurring in the five year period between 1988 and 1993. Looking at the change in poverty by region and socioeconomic groups raises some questions about the validity of the data and about why certain groups fared better than others.

# Declining per **capita** expenditures **and** increasing poverty, 1985-1988

Between 1985 and 1988 the decline in household expenditure per capita was greater in the urban areas than in the rural areas, setting aside for the moment the West Forest region (table 3). Mean per capita expenditures fell by almost 30 percent in Abidjan and 40 percent in Other Cities, compared to the 15 percent decline in East Forest and the 21 percent cent decline in the Savannah. Despite the large fall in household expenditure in Abidjan, there was no increase in poverty, since even in 1988 mean household expenditure per capita was still three times greater than the poverty line of 75,000 CFAF per year. The decline in expenditures in rural areas was accompanied by a large increases in poverty in West Forest and in the Savannah. West Forest registered the largest fall in expenditure, almost 50 percent between 1985-1988.

Between 1985 and 1988 per capita expenditure fell by 33 percent, a much larger fall than the decline in real private consumption per capita of 6 percent. The large difference in expenditure trends between the household surveys and national accounts estimates has not been accounted for. The large decline in household expenditure per capita and the increase in poverty in the West Forest region-- a cocoa and coffee growing region like the East Forest-- is especially puzzling. Household expenditure per capita in the West Forest was 50 percent higher than East Forest in 1985, but fell about 20 percent year, bringing it to a level below that of the East Forest in 1988. In 1985 and 1986, West Forest had a 4 The 1985-1988 household survey data come from the four COte d'Ivoire Living Standards Surveys (CILSS) and are based on the expenditure aggregate described in Oh and Venkataraman (1992). The 1993 and 1995 data are taken from the Household Priority Survey (HPS). Changes to the cleaned 1993 and 1995 INS data files (as of March 1996) are described in Annex 1. The comparability of the methods used to estimate food expenditure in the CILLS and LPS surveys are discussed in Appendix B.

5 Grootaert chose the 75,000 CFAF per day poverty line as the index of extreme poverty because it corresponded to a headcount index of 10 percent in 1985, based on the set of deflators he used. This paper uses the CPI series published by the INS as the basis for its deflators. For a discussion of the construction of the deflator series for the household surveys, see Appendix B. The 75,000 CFAF/day poverty line translates into $PP 410 (purchasing power parity), slightly exceeding the poverty line of $PP 370 (1985$PP) used in the 1990 World Development Report. This calculation is based on the purchasing power parity exchange rate for 1985 for private consumption of 182.85 CFAF/$PP from the Summers and Heston data which was used in Chen, Datt, and Ravallion's (1994) estimations of the incidence of poverty in developing countries.

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