The Impact of Urban Expansion on the Livelihood of Farming Communities in Peri-Urban Area of Bahir Dar City Amahara, Ethiopia

Abstract

In the past two decades, Bahir Dar city has been growing at a faster rate of urbanization. This is manifested by high population concentration in the city and horizontal physical expansion of the city. Using survey data from 310 randomly selected households in four peripheral areas of Bahir Dar city, both descriptive and econometric model have been used to analyze the data. Binary and multinomial logit regression models were used to investigate the effect impact of urban expansion on their livelihood and to examine the livelihood strategies pursued in the area.  logit regression shows that displacement status was influenced by head education, education of working member, household size, male working member, dependent ratio, household land size, and total value of current productive asset although the propensity score matching estimation result shows, there is insignificant difference between displaced and non-displaced in terms of livelihood outcome. Nevertheless the effect of displacement on household’s livelihood outcome has a negative difference -0.152 as compared to non-displaced.  The multinomial logit model result shows variables include head age, head sex, head education, household size, dependency ratio, household land size, total value of current productive asset and access to credit which were determining farmers’ choice of livelihood strategies.

Keywords: Impact; livelihood strategy; Propensity score matching; determinants; regression; Ethiopia