Poverty Situations in the Case of Amuru Woreda, Horro Guduru Wolegga Zone, Oromia Regional State

Abstract

Over 80% of the Ethiopian people live in the rural areas and agriculture is the main stay of the economy as it commands the lion’s share in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), employment opportunities, export earnings and supply of raw materials. This study aims to examine the poverty situations in the case of Amuru woreda, Horro Guduru Wolegga Zone, Oromia Regional state. Poverty is manifested in low per capita income, low literacy rate, low primary school enrollment ratio, limited access to health services, safe water and sanitation facilities, high rate of infant, child and maternal mortality as well as short life expectancy. Employing cross sectional design, this research was undertaken on a random sample of 163 households so as to study rural poverty situation and its determinants in Amuru woreda. Cost of Basic Needs approach and Foster, Greer and Thorbecke measures have been employed to set the poverty line and compute the magnitude of rural poverty. Accordingly, the food and total poverty lines were found to be Birr 6168.24 and 7960.04/adult/annum respectively. Accounting for over 77.5 percent, food takes the lion’s share in the consumption expenditure of the poor and occupied substantial amount in the estimated poverty line. While the incidence, depth and severity of food poverty stood at 42, 31.5 and 11.5 percent, the respective measures for total poverty were found to be 45.5, 27.2 and 9.9 percent. The study clearly indicates that the magnitude of both food and total poverty in the woreda exceeds the corresponding average at national level and Oromia region. To the last to minimize magnitude of poverty in the study area: expansion of education and intensification of family planning programme at grass root level, awareness creation towards the significant role of saving habit, mechanism that compel with skill training, not the whole group should be paved and defaulter to incur the costs to loans deserves prime attention.

Keywords: Rural poverty, Households, magnitude, Amuru woreda