Abstract:

Poverty analysis studies in Ethiopia are dominated by measures determined by the subjectivity of the researchers and not with the involvement of households in understanding and measuring what is meant to the people. Studies conducted to take into considerations the knowledge of the poor are very scant and limited to rural participatory projects. This study is motivated to bridge the literature gap of comparing the objective measuring of poverty with a measure that accounts the perception of households about poverty. Hence, this study aims at examining rural household poverty and its determining factors using alternative poverty measurement approaches inGozamin district of East Gojjam Zone, Amhara Region. It used both objective and subjective based poverty analysis approaches, where the poverty line of the study area is estimated as 19.16 Birr per day using cost of basic needs approach. The study indicates that 35.12 % of the population lives under poverty and it is closely estimated as 33.33% using Participatory Poverty Assessment (PPA). Poverty is rampant and a sever challenge in Dega(cold) agro-ecology of the District, where 57.37% of the population lives under poverty compared to Kolla(hot), where it is down to 8.4%. Among others, family size and being in Kolla agro-ecology have significant negative effect on consumption expenditure, but positively affect poverty incidence, gap and severity, while access to credit, cooperative, health extension services and off-farm activities have significant but exactly opposite results. PPA findings revealed that, perception of the community towards poverty is beyond the conventional, income/consumption based definition. Therefore, development policies and poverty reduction strategies should emphasie on local level poverty understanding and measures.

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