1. Introduction Poverty is well documented in Mozambique, but few studies have systematically made distinction between chronic and transitory poverty or estimate their determinants. The distinction between transitory and chronic poverty is of great interest for policy makers as it provide insights in what development strategies to pursue based on the prevalent type of poverty Two important aspect in poverty study is whether there policies will have similar effect on addressing chronic and transitory poverty or whether the determinants of chronic differ from those of transitory poverty and that the determinants of chronic and transient poverty are congruent. To answer those questions, one needs to decompose poverty into chronic and transient components which possess an important methodological challenge in poverty analysis. This study aims to investigate the effects of the initial landholdings endowments on the ability of people to tackle chronic and transient poverty. More specifically, two research questions are addressed: What is the effect of the initial landholdings endowments on transient and chronic poverty? Are the determinants of chronic and transient poverty congruent? Materials and methods Data derived from two-period three-year panel survey conducted in rural central and northern regions of Mozambique, covering five provinces (Manica, Tete, Sofala, Nampula, and Zambezia) in 2008 and 2011. The sample size was originally 1,186 households, but due to outliers and extraneous values in some of variables of interest, 14 households were dropped from the sample. The estimation strategy consists in two main steps: First: Decomposition of total poverty into chronic and transient poverty based on Jalan & Ravalion (1998), such that: Chronic poverty:, Transient poverty: where is the intertemporal income average, known as “permanent income” Second: Two empirical models were estimated with censored quantile regression: where C*/Tr* are latent variables and C i /Tri are the observed chronic/transient poverty, β a vector of estimable parameters and x i a set of explanatory variables including land, and ε i are the model error terms. Results The majority of poverty is transient. The decomposition shows that 66 percent of poverty is transient and 34 percent in chronic. Unlike most of earlier studies, the determinants of chronic and transient poverty are not congruent; and policies to address chronic poverty are not necessarily the same to tackle the transient poverty. The most important variables for transient poverty are remoteness, head’s age, family, fertilizer use, and livestock. All these variables are important even when the cultivated land is considered exogenous, except the remoteness and livestock that become insignificant. All these covariates tend to decrease the transient poverty, except the remoteness which is likely to decrease it. The most important variables for the chronic poverty are the cultivated land size, access to self-employment, use of fertilizer, improved seeds and hiring seasonal labor. But, when the cultivated land size is considered endogenous, only male headship, head’s education and civil status of the head (widowed heads) are important for chronic poverty. All these variables tend to decrease chronic poverty except the widowed heads which tend to increase it. Results show that doubling the initial cultivated land size is likely to decrease chronic poverty in about 0.39 percent under the current poverty lines. This level is lower under higher poverty lines. This result is consistent with Jalan & Ravalion (1998) that households with large cultivated land are less vulnerable to chronic poverty. The adoption of improved agricultural technologies has the potential to tackle both chronic and transient poverty. Results show the adoption of chemical fertilizers decreases chances to be chronically and transitorily poor by 59 and 49 percent; respectively. Conclusions The determinants of chronic and transient poverty are not congruent, suggesting that the chronic and transient have different causes. Therefore, different interventions should be deployed to target each type of poverty. However, multiple effects are expected from interventions aiming to promote agricultural growth and labor market. Although the majority of poverty is transient, fighting chronic should be a priority given the fact that chronic poverty because as argued by Garza-Rodriguez et al. (2010), more unfair the chronic poverty is more unfair and damaging than transient poverty, because a chronically poor person have been in such state for long period of time which can lead to a damaging social fabric of the society which may lead to political instability. So, long-term interventions such as education and self-employment are recommended to tackle chronic poverty due to the fact that an educated person can easily aspire to have higher income over the course of their lifetime. On the other hand, with promotion of rural non-farm economy, households with large size of family labor, are likely to take advantage of large number of people that can contribute to household income helping the households to cope with external shocks leading to transient poverty. The determinants of chronic poverty are very sensitive to the exogeneity assumption of cultivated land. Literature cited Jalan, J. & Ravallion, M. (1998). Determinant of Transient and Chronic Poverty. Evidence from Rural China. World Bank. Policy Research Working Paper Series No. 1936. Washington DC. Garza-Rodriguez, J., Gonzalez-Martinez, M., Quiroga-Lozano, M., Solis- Santoyo, L. & Yarto-Weber, G. (2010). Chronic and transient poverty in Mexico: 2002-2005. Economic Bulletin 30(4): 3188-3200. Raul Pitoro Michigan State University pitorora@msu.edu The effect of the initial land endowments on Transient and Chronic Poverty: Evidence from Rural Mozambique Acknowledgements: Research supported by the Food Security Group at Michigan State University under the Mozambique Food Security III LWA Cooperative Agreement and a Cooperative Agreement between MSU and the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service.