The relationship between family strengthening strategy and vulnerability transition: An application of non-linear OAXACA decomposition

Abstract

The objective of this study was to assess the differences in vulnerability transition between household that were involved and those not involved in family strengthening interventions. The differences were decomposed into components attributed to variations in characteristics and variations in the effects of the predictors in the two groups. The assessment was based on data sourced from 2011 and 2014 Sustainable Comprehensive Responses vulnerability assessment report collected from 17,484 participants in 35 districts. The analysis was done using frequency distributions, summary statistic and non-linear Oaxaca’ Blinder Multivariate decomposition of logistic regression. In the result, the proportion of children who transited from critical vulnerability to lower vulnerability was higher among households with at least a member involved in family strengthening intervention (49.7%). Overall, the gap in vulnerability transitions was significantly attributed to both variations in characteristics and variations in effect of predictors (P<0.05). In particular, the overall gap in vulnerability transition was attributed to the difference in characteristics namely region, parenthood status, child has chronic disease, child has disability, guardian has disability, guardian has chronic disease and house hold size (P<0.05). The factors contributed to 15.7%, -0.2%, 0.4%, 2.2%, -1.5%, 2.2%, and 5.1% respectively to overall gap in vulnerability transition across the study group. In regards to the overall gap in vulnerability transition attributed to variations in effect of the predictors, factors that contributed to the overall gap were region, parenthood status, and involvement in food security and nutrition activities ( P<0.05). However only characteristics namely region (East and East central region), parenthood status (mother absent and both parents present), presence of chronic disease and disability among index child, presence of chronic disease among guardians could successfully explain the variations in vulnerability transition. Based on the findings, the differences in vulnerability transition is an issue of both variations in the characteristics and variations in effects of the predictors. Thus, this study suggests following interventions in reducing gap in vulnerability; scale up of family strengthening activities holistically especially parenting skills, improved access to healthcare services for vulnerable people especially hard to reach and mainstreaming persons with disability rights of access in all public programs/ intervention.