lowest limit is 1. The lower value occurs when a given household has only one source of income ( _Sg_ = 1 and _Sj_ = 0 for all _j_ ≠ _g_ ), and the upper value occurs only if the shares are equal, i.e., the distribution is even across all income source-earner combinations ( _Sg_ = _Sj_ for all _g_ and _j_ ). In this study, the inverse of Herfindahl-Index is used to measure income diversification by taking α = 2. However, the results were also tested with alternative α values.

# **5.  Data and Descriptive Statistics**

We use two comparable household level data from the national Income, Consumption, and Expenditure Surveys (ICES) in 1990/91 and 1995/96<sup>6</sup> , and a time series rainfall data (19511996) from 113 representative weather stations located throughout Zimbabwe. The Central Statistical Office of Zimbabwe administered the surveys. The ICES were based on representative samples comprising both urban and rural sectors of the country (table 1). They contain data on socio-demographic characteristics, incomes from various sources, consumption and other expenditures on a weekly basis, and for some durable and semi-durable items, on a monthly or yearly basis. Each selected household was monitored for a complete month, during which household consumption expenditures were recorded in a daily record book. From the 1990/91 round, about 14,168 observations were obtained following data cleaning. For 1995/96, we have 17,527 observations from a total of 395 enumeration areas. Table 1 presents the composition and geographic distribution of sampled households for both years.

The consumption portions of the questionnaires for the two surveys are virtually identical and permit construction of a consistent measure of consumption expenditures. Our welfare measure, the consumption expenditures, includes the value of all goods and services that are consumed in the previous month. We use a poverty-specific price deflator to adjust the per capita consumption expenditures. Raw prices from regional markets, used to create the national CPI, were obtained from CSO. The prices of the 23 items used to create the Zimbabwean food poverty line (see CSO, 1998b) were weighted using the food poverty line weights. The resulting index was used as an implicit deflator, with June 1990 Zimbabwean dollars in Harare as the base. This index reflects changes in costs of obtaining goods and services faced by the poorest consumers, and varies by survey month and province.

A time-series rainfall information comes from 113 representative weather stations throughout Zimbabwe from 1951 through 1996. The data were obtained from the Meteorological Office of Zimbabwe. Season- and region-specific rainfall variables were created using these data. Three basic rainfall variables representing different cropping seasons to account for seasonal variations in observed rainfall were used: Planting season rainfall variable measures the average rain during September and October months; weeding season variable accounts for rain during NovemberJanuary and runs through weeding and growing season; and harvest season rainfall variable

> 6 The 1995/6 ICES has a slightly expanded set of questions on a few items and a slightly less disaggregated questions on a few others. For our purposes, these differences create very little complication. We have accounted for those differences by establishing a similar set of variables in order to maintain the comparability between the results of 1990/91 and 1995/6. Although the sampling designs of both surveys were quite similar and representative of the different segments of the population, it was not possible to construct a panel structure.

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