Determinants of Income and Consumption Poverty in Far-Western Rural Hills of Nepal : A Binary Logistic Regression Analysis <Article>

Poverty in Nepal remains forefront in Nepalese development agenda since 1970s. However, there has not been significant improvement in poverty situation and poverty still remains the key research issue in Nepal. This study aims to analyze income and consumption measure of poverty applying an econometric tool taking a case of Baitadi district from far-western rural hills of Nepal. Data obtained from household survey is used for the analysis. A binary logistic regression model is applied for identifying the variables having a significant impact on income and consumption poverty. Both measures of poverty show that it is quite high in the study areas. Most of the factors that determine income and consumption poverty are more or less similar. However, there are still few factors that affect income and consumption poverty in different way. For instance, a chance of household to suffer food insecurity is significantly higher in Melauli, a relatively remote VDC. Subsistence nature of agriculture and absence of well-developed market structure that leads to higher price of food commdities is the main reason for such difference. Similarly, family size, operational landholding and livestock holding are important determinants of food insecurity, whereas, dependency ratio and occupation are important determinants of income poverty. Education of household head and landholding are important determinants for both income and consumption poverty