Abstract

The objective of this study is to determine the causes of poverty among Vadda peoples living in traditional Vadda villages. Dambana is selected as the study area since it is the well-known traditional Vadda hamlet. By departing from the money metric approach, in this study, poverty is identified as the deprivation of basic needs namely food security, shelter, sanitation, drinking water, health and non-discrimination. A pre-tested questionnaire was administered among randomly selected households in the study area to collect required primary data. The overall poverty index (PI) was derived using dimension-specific deprivation indices to separate poor from non-poor. In the next step, selected demographic and socioeconomic factors, which were filtered based on the literature, were tested using linear probability model (LPM) to identify the determinants of poverty. As the model specified, household size, monthly income of the household, number of livelihood means, level of education of HoH, and the extent of cultivable lands owned by households were identified as the causes of poverty among traditional Vadda peoples.

Keywords: Basic needs, Deprivation, Linear probability models, Poverty, Vadda people