Dimensions of Poverty in Northeastern Ethiopia: Looking into Multitude Facets of Poverty for Poverty Reduction

Abstract

Despite efforts being made and some signs of change, poverty in Ethiopia is staggeringly high and thus the country is undoubtedly among the poorest nations in the world in which poverty persists at debilitating levels and hence becomes multifaceted and longstanding problem over periods. The situation of northeastern Ethiopia, one of the poverty stricken areas in the country, does not be different from the above situations. A thorough examination different dimension of poverty and estimating the extent of each dimension are important for policy measures to tackle poverty. This study is, therefore, aims to analyze the economic, social and institutional dimensions of poverty in the northeastern Ethiopia. The study employed rural household survey questionnaire based on income and expenditure dataset of the 400 sample households from four study weredas using a two stage random sampling method proportionate to size. Data on the demographic, socio-economic and institutional characteristics of the sample households are also collected so as to analyze the various poverty dimensions. While the cost of basic needs approach was used to determine the poverty line, FGT family of poverty indices were used to estimate the extent of poverty in monetary terms. In addition, the analysis of multidimensional poverty is also supplemented by additional measures of poverty in terms of the economic, social and institutional aspects using the summary statistics and t-tests. Concerning the monetary measures of poverty, the absolute food and total poverty line are ETB 2866.14 and 3410.71 respectively and the extreme food and total poverty lines are 2149.39.59 and 2557.77 respectively. Based on the above absolute total poverty line, the incidence of poverty in rural northeastern Ethiopia is 39 percent. With regard to the other economic and social dimensions of poverty, households identified as poor in our survey confirms that they are worse off in almost all dimensions than average or better-off households so that poverty in rural northeastern Ethiopia is truly multi-dimensional. As a result, in most cases rural households in the study areas are facing adverse socio-economic composition which in turn increases the likelihood of falling into poverty. Therefore, the identified multitude dimensions and the respective estimated magnitudes of poverty in the study areas are worth considering as a positive knock for policymakers and anyone else who may have a stake on poverty reduction and hence better livelihood of rural households in northeasten Ethiopia in particular and in the country in general.

Keywords: Poverty, dimensions of poverty, households, wollo, zones, northeastern Ethiopia, Ethiopia