looking at multidimensional poverty, studies in Burkina Faso and Togo have found large inequalities by gender – with women more deprived than men in the six dimensions studied (housing, basic utilities, assets, education, employment, and access to credit) – albeit coupled with regional variation (Agbodji et al 2013), though these results did not consider displacement status.

The lack of consensus concerning the poverty situation of female-headed households is due in part to the use of the inconsistent definition of headship and the heterogeneity of female-headed households (Milazzo and van de Walle, 2015). Understanding the routes that a family had towards having a female head is important to characterize this heterogeneity, especially in displacement situations where widowhood and separation from family members are common (Hanmer et al, 2021). As a result, the literature further disaggregates female-headed households to _de jure_ and _de facto_ heads. _De facto_ female heads are households headed by a married female with a husband living either in the household or working outside the family. _De jure_ female heads are households headed by widows, divorced, separated, and single women. Based on the disaggregated analysis, widow-headed households are frequently found to be significantly impoverished (Appleton 1996; Horrell and Krishnan 2007; van de Walle 2013; World Bank, 2001). In contrast, de facto female-headed households who receive transfers from a migrated male member are better off than de jure ones (Chant, 2010; Klassen et. Al, 2015; World Bank 2011). This suggests that distinguishing households headed by _de jure_ and _de facto_ females has the potential to improve the targeting of policies. This is particularly relevant in a forced displacement situation where female-headed households often have higher dependency ratios, fewer able-bodied adults, and more caregiving responsibilities.

The experience of children and adolescents growing up in forcibly displaced households also intersects with gender and multidimensional poverty. Displacement can disrupt cultural and gendered norms to present women with new opportunities for household decision-making and leadership (ODI 2019a). Even if gender norms and attitudes do not change on a structural level within IDP households, there is evidence that the behaviors of men and women in these households do indeed shift in response to the pressures that poverty and displacement status create (Assad et al. 2021, Rubiano-Matulevich 2021). Children and adolescents’ long-term exposure to households with a more equalized division of domestic labor, as a result of violent or political conflict, warrants further investigation.

# **2.3 Country contexts**

The countries with subnational regions covered in this study, using data from 2017 or 2018, are Ethiopia, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan. All are located in Sub-Saharan Africa, have undergone or are currently involved in armed conflict, and are affected by environmental issues such as drought, famine or flooding. Despite some commonalities, each faces a unique set of social, political and economic challenges, which cannot be accurately covered in this study. However, to contextualize the findings, a brief introduction of the country context is presented alongside the poverty estimates by the $1.90/day measure and the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI).<sup>3</sup>

> 3 An international measure of acute multidimensional poverty, aligined with the 2030 Agenda, that captures deprivations in health, education, and living standards for more than 100 countries (Alkire and Jahan 2018; Alkire, Kanagaratnam and Suppa 2020).

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