Poverty in Madagascar is structural and dynamic — reproduced by the interaction of institutional fragility, spatial inequality, gendered constraints, and increasingly frequent compound shocks. Amid intermittent growth spurts, the country has achieved little sustained poverty reduction since the early 2000s. More than three-quarters of the population live below the national poverty line, with rural poverty particularly entrenched and urban poverty rising under recent crises. Recurrent political instability, climate shocks, the COVID-19 pandemic, price volatility, and weak public systems have combined to produce a condition described by many participants in this research as “crisis without recovery”.

This report synthesises nationally representative quantitative analysis with in-depth qualitative research across four contrasting regions: Androy, Boeny, Analamanga, and Vakinankaratra, which are selected to represent the regional diversity of Madagascar in terms of ecology, livelihoods, governance capacity, and vulnerability to shocks. The quantitative evidence identifies the statistical correlates of poverty and the association between compound shocks and lower welfare. The qualitative research reveals how these pressures are lived, negotiated, and reproduced within households and communities over time. Together, the evidence shows that poverty in Madagascar functions as a system of recurrent loss under structural constraints.

Authored by Kate Bird, Vidya Diwakar, David Rajaon, Jackaroy Jonathan Randrianja, Sarah Tojo Mandaharisoa, Patricia Hajasoa, Princia Randrianarison, Marta Eichsteller

Madagascar faces one of the world’s most complex crisis environments, where climate-related disasters, recurrent economic shocks, and political instability intersect to shape persistent and widespread poverty. The country’s national poverty rate stood at 75.2% of the population in 2022, a slight increase from 73% a decade earlier in 2012 (EPM, 2012; EPM, 2022). It has the world’s highest rate of extreme poverty (UNICEF, 2023). Droughts – particularly in the Grand Sud – combine with cyclones and floods to erode livelihoods, while economic crises related to price volatility, revenue losses, and the long-lasting impacts of COVID-19 further depress household welfare. These shocks occur within a structural context characterised by weak infrastructure, limited market integration, low-productivity agriculture, and fragile governance systems. Understanding how these crises reinforce one another is central to explaining why national poverty levels have remained extremely high and largely stagnant over the past decade. This paper examines climate-related disasters (droughts and floods) and economic shocks and stressors – against a backdrop of other crises including conflict and political violence – to assess their relationship with household poverty in Madagascar.

This work is part of a broader working paper series on intersecting crises and poverty in different country contexts (e.g. see Diwakar and Brzezinska, 2023).

In common with the other working papers on this topic, this paper brings together secondary literature on the pandemic and in this case draws on four particular datasets:

• the ‘Enquête Permanente auprès des Ménages’ (EPM) 2021/22;

• the Global Flood Observatory (GFO) yearly data, from 2010 to 2018;

• the Climatic Research Unit Time Series (CRU TS) yearly data on drought, from 2010 to 2022; and

• the Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset (ACLED) yearly data from 2010 to 2022.

Contextualising poverty against a backdrop of shocks, stressors, and crises requires bringing together poverty correlates relating to ‘people’, focused especially on demographics and livelihoods, and ‘place’, including the broader contexts that might inhibit escape from poverty, like crises. This approach is critical to ensure that pro-poor initiatives are sufficiently risk-informed to help support poverty reduction.

Authored by Vidya Diwakar and Arnaud Galinié

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