Determinates of Urban Poverty at Household Level: The Case of Wolaitta Soddo Town, SNNPRS, Ethiopia

Poverty is daily experience of citizens in Ethiopia and the government has implemented different poverty reducing policies and strategies in the intention to reach middle income countries in the coming 7 years. This Study aimed at analyzing the determinants of urban poverty At household level in terms of demographic, economic and social practices in soddo Town. The study was conducted under cross sectional research design. The approach that was used is a mixed approach which makes the use of both quantitative and qualitative methods. Samples of 227 households were drawn from the target population by adopting systematic random sampling technique and 18 of them were discarded from further consideration due to lack of response. Data collecting instruments like questionnaire, semi-structured interview, document analysis and focus group discussions were used to collect data. .A Logistic regression model was employed and estimated based on the primary data, with the probability of a household being poor as a dependent variable and a set of demographic and socioeconomic variables as the explanatory parameters. By making use of Food Energy Intake (FEI) approach the surveyed households are identified as the poor and non-poor. Based on this, Birr 3246 was computed as food poverty line per adult equivalent per month and out of the 209 respondent household heads, 94(45%) were found to be poor. The poverty gap index of 8 percent and poverty severity index of 3 percent were estimated. The variables that are positively correlated with the probability of being poor are family size whose number of members are 5 and above, education, age, sex, saving, electricity connection, unemployment and marital status. The variables that are negatively correlated with the probability of being poor are family size whose numbers of members are less than 5, house tenure, water pipe connection, employment status. These calls for urgent interventions aimed at curbing the problems of the people through creating employment opportunities, family planning, provision of market based short term trainings, empowering females and distribution of social service, improving education services, health services, and creating access to credit facilities need to be promoted for poor urban household in the study area. Keywords: - Poverty, poverty line, poverty incidence, poverty gap, poverty severity DOI: 10.7176/JAAS/60-02 Publication date: January 31st 202