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Traps and Thresholds in Pastoralist Mobility

This article presents a new approach to identifying poverty traps in East African pastoralist communities. A flexible semiparametric estimation procedure is used to identify a bifurcation in the propensity to engage in the asset-based, mobile herding livelihood, in comparison to the sedentary alternative, as a function of herd size. The identified threshold is consistent with previous evidence on poverty traps based on modeling herd stock dynamics. The approach contributes to an emerging literature that seeks to identify poverty traps through testing the implications of the posited behavioral mechanism behind the trap, as opposed to directly modeling asset dynamics. The approach is further employed to provide complementary evidence on the relationship between ability and assets in sustaining mobile pastoralism.