measures average rainfall during February-April and covers the harvest.<sup>7</sup> Transitory rainfall variables are measured as standard deviations of actual rainfall in region j at time t from its regional mean.<sup>8</sup>

# **Descriptive Statistics**

We divide household income sources into four categories: formal wage employment income, informal wage employment income<sup>9</sup> , self-employment income, and non-labour income (table 2). Household members could be self-employed in agriculture or own business enterprises. For the Zimbabwe data, property and transfer and remittance incomes constitute the non-labour income category. Tables 3-5 present the percent distributions of households according to the number of income sources (N), number of income earners (M) and total number of income source-earner combinations (G). Not all households derive income from each of the four sources listed in table 2, although most households have at least 2 income sources (table 2). A few of the changes in these contributions between 1990/91 and 1995/96 are worth noting. First, there is a greater reliance on informal sources of income in both urban and rural areas. Reliance on government and parastatal incomes declined. In urban areas, private (formal and informal) income sources increased in importance, while public (government and parastatal) income sources declined. This probably reflects the retrenchment component of economic adjustment. Agriculture declines in importance in rural areas, reflecting the drought and the reduced food demand from urban areas. The importance of non-farm income sources such as informal wage employment increased in rural areas. Meanwhile, in urban areas, the contribution of incomes from urban agriculture (mainly from fruit and vegetable production) increased.

There are marked differences in livelihood strategy in urban and rural areas. The rural areas have a more diversified income base, with less than 17% depending on a single income source at either time period (table 2) while about 38% of urban households depend on a single income source. Using the income classification on table 2, in 1990/91 (1995/96) 73% (58%) of rural households had 3 or more income sources. In urban areas, 1990/91 (1995/96) saw 31% (27%) of households with at least 3 income sources. While all areas saw less diversified portfolio following the shocks, the rural areas got hit harder in terms of reduction in number of income sources.

The descriptive statistics on table 6 do not indicate significant changes in demographic and educational variables before and after the shocks, although educational attainments are generally higher in urban areas. Household size showed slight downward growth. The percentage of households receiving non-labor income such as remittances and transfers decreased in both urban and rural areas. This is perhaps indicative of the fact that even the traditional sources of

> 7 The cropping seasons are approximate; planting can take place as late as November and harvesting can come late in May. The information on seasons was obtained from crop calendars of Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

> 8 The regional mean is computed over all years except the current year, to eliminate biases in the measure of the deviation from the mean for those regions with shorter time-series.

> 9 It is difficult to make a clear distinction between formal and informal activities in developing countries. For the purpose of this paper, formal refers to economic activities that are registered and licensed by the government while informal ones do not possess one or both of these characteristics.

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