This paper examines the impacts of agroclimatic shock on income inequa
lity and poverty, using household-farm data from three agroecological
zones of Burkina Faso together with income-source decompositions of th
e Gini coefficient and the Foster-Greer-Thorbecke poverty index before
and after a severe drought. Our findings reveal that, because the poo
r lack acces to off-farm income, off-farm income increases inequality
and fails to shield poor households against agroclimatic risks. The di
rection of the empirical relationship between changes in inequality an
d poverty after the drought depends critically on environmental variab
les and on apparent constraints on income diversification at different
points in the income distribution. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Scienc
e Ltd