Summary and Conclusions

Abstract

The government faces a formidable economic challenge. Unemployment in the urban areas is about 20 per cent and rising, and among young school-leavers it is higher still and rising faster. Real incomes of wage-earners have fallen by about a third since the middle of the 1970s and those of salaried workers have fallen even more. A person receiving the minimum wage can no longer provide a family with its minimum food requirements even if the whole of his income is spent on food. In the rural areas living standards are even lower, and there too real incomes have fallen and the substantial gains of the land reform have begun to be eroded away. Thus a majority of people in Ethiopia are poorer today than they were in 1974.