Poverty and livelihood strategies of female-headed households in rural Ethiopia: the case of Libo Kemkem Woreda, South Gondar

Abstract

Female-headed households vulnerability to poverty and their frequency has increased over time in Ethiopia. Female-headed households have shared the great parts of the poverty stricken segments of the society in the rural parts of the country where majority population and in depth poverty found. This study examines vulnerability to poverty and livelihood strategies of female-headed households in rural Libo Kemkem Woreda, South Gondar Administrative Zone of Amhara National Regional State, Ethiopia. Secondary and primary data were used for the analysis of the social processes. The empirical research employed using both qualitative and quantitative data in addressing the basic research questions through participant observation, individual interviews, life history, focus group discussion and household survey. Besides descriptive statistics, this study used probit model and independent T-test analysis. Qualitative as well as quantitative findings show that female-headed households suffer from access to and control over basic productive agricultural resources such as farmland, labor, livestock (oxen), capital and other extension services compared to male-headed households. Though the land owning pattern between the male-headed households (0.907 ha.) and female-headed households (0.888 ha.) does not show much variation, the other inputs like male adult children, oxen, cultural taboo are critical in drifting the female-headed households to poverty stricken vulnerability.The probit model result shows that the dummy variables of head of household sex and sources of credit have effect of vulnerability and significant at a significant level of 0.01 and 0.05 respectively. As far as the continuous variables that proposed to affect vulnerability are concerned, age household head (0.1), size of owned land (0.01), and livestock holding in TLU (0.01) have effect on vulnerability.