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Abstract
Despite some improvements in recent years, poverty and food insecurity remain widespread
and the main challenges in Ethiopia. Using individual and household level data collected in
rural Ethiopia, we examine if aspirations are strongly associated with well-being outcomes, as
posited in the aspirations failure framework articulated by Ray (2006) and others. We employ
both bivariate and multivariate analyses. We find that aspirations (particularly that of the
household head) are indeed strongly associated with various triangulating measures of
household food (in)security including per-capita calorie consumption, the food consumption
score (FCS), the household dietary diversity score (HDDS), and the household food
insecurity access scale (HFIAS). We discuss the channels through which aspirations might
affect food security. Findings in this study provide suggestive evidence that policies aimed at
improving food security might benefit from multiple effects (both direct and indirect) if they
incorporate aspirations raising strategies.