Comparative Analysis of Rural to Urban Multidimensional Poverty and Its Correlates at Household Level in Gamo Zone of Southern Ethiopia

Multidimensional poverty is the main problem in rural as compared to urban areas of Southern Ethiopia. Despite numerous efforts made to measure multidimensional aspects of welfare at the national level. However, there exist limited studies done on a comparative analysis of rural to urban. This study assesses the problem by comparing urban (Arba Minch town) with rural areas of Gamo zone in Southern Ethiopia. The aim was to measure the level and identify the underlying factors of multidimensional poverty. A representative 396 households selected using both stratified and simple random sampling techniques. The primary data analyzed using simple descriptive statistics and econometrics (ordered logit model) analyses. The Alkire and Santos method was used to measure the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) and its category. The result shows that multidimensional poverty is more chronic in rural people (with an incidence of 54%, 76% of severity, and 41% of MPI) than people in urban (with an incidence of 48%, 45% of severity, and 22% of MPI). The level of venerability to multidimensional poverty measures influenced by a number of demographic, socio-economic, farm-specific attributes, institutional factors in combination with composite indicators of MPI. The case study shows that poverty reduction policies and programs have to be designed for urban and rural areas by capturing the associate aggravating factors. Therefore, the study suggests holistic policies and strategies across the country should be abandoned and disaggregated into urban and rural by policymakers.