Rural household multidimensional poverty in Degu’a Tembien District, South Eastern Zone of Tigray, Ethiopia

Abstract

Poverty is one of the most multifaceted problems, in which a single indictor such as income or consumption is not adequate to show the comprehensive picture of poverty among households. Multidimensional poverty approach helps to show the actual realities of households in rural areas. This study aimed at assessing household multidimensional poverty focusing on a set of household capabilities and functionings in Degu’a Tembien District in Tigray Region, Ethiopia. Cross-sectional data were collected from randomly selected 420 households from six rural Kebeles (villages) of the District to estimate multidimensional poverty. Findings showed that household’s incidence of deprivation was generally high and widespread in landholding, livestock ownership, decision making on income, access to electricity, energy use for cooking, and access to sanitation. Results also showed that 60% of households were multidimensional poor while the average intensity of multidimensional deprivation, which showed the share of deprivations each poor household’s experiences on average, was 58%. Overall, a Multidimensional Poverty Index of 0.35 was found for the rural households in the study district. This result implies that rural development poverty reduction program should be focused on targeted interventions on the indicators that have higher deprivations.