Indian Journal of Economics and Development

Effective poverty prevention programs, by and large, depend more upon the information on the expected poor in the future than the observed poor in the current time. An attempt was made to examine the trend, magnitude and determinants of multidimensional vulnerability in Ethiopia and across its regional states. The Ethiopian Socioeconomic Survey was the source of the data. The fuzzy membership value of a household to the subset of poor has been indexed from eight dimensions and fifteen indicators of wellbeing. It was found that the degree of vulnerability was considerably high and above the headcount rate of poverty. The contribution of dimensions varied considerably while regional disparities were prevalent. The rural households were more vulnerable than their urban counterparts. The findings suggested the need for revisiting development policies that account for and target the vulnerable in development interventions.