ANALYSIS OF SOCIOECONOMIC VULNERABILITY OF STREET VENDORS: CASE STUDY FOR DIRE DAWA CITY, EASTERN ETHIOPIA
ANALYSIS OF SOCIOECONOMIC VULNERABILITY OF STREET VENDORS: CASE STUDY FOR DIRE DAWA CITY, EASTERN ETHIOPIA

Summary/Abstract: The study sought to empirically analyse the socioeconomic vulnerability of street vendors in Dire Dawa city, Eastern Ethiopia. A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 198 vendors who were selected using multi-stage Time-Location Sampling procedures from six street vending cluster sites and included the itinerant vendors in the city. Data were analysed using Dabir-Alai’s (Dabir-Alai, 2004) and Brata’s (Brata, 2010) vulnerability analysis frameworks; but with little modification. This study; however, departs from the above two as it included more elements of vulnerability, has used descriptive statistics such as mean and standard deviation to determine the level of vulnerability and inferential statistics i.e. Chi-Squares to test whether vulnerability is associated with some physical, demographic, and socioeconomic characteristics of vendors. The results showed that vulnerability was higher for street vendors as higher proportion of vendors lay on the high end of the spectrum of vulnerability. However, it was varied with sex, type of goods vended, frequency of attendance of vending cluster sites and type of goods; but, not with the location of vending. At the end, the article discusses the need for proper understanding of vulnerability of vendors and implementation of inclusive and participatory approaches in management and governance of urban public spaces upon which the livelihoods of vendors largely depend in the city

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