Consumption base Measures and Analysis of Urban Poverty the case of Miahcew Southern Tigray

This study explores the extent of poverty and vulnerability to poverty of households of urban residents of Maichew, southern Tigray Regional State. The town is ranked at the bottom in growth momentum among similar zonal towns of the region and the society exists in abject poverty. On the other hand, the area is nominated as a growth corridor of the region. Consumption approach is applied for the poverty analysis. The study thoroughly looks the welfare status at household level through different analytical techniques like Foster, Greer and Thorbecke (FGT), OLS, Probit, Tobit, 3FGLS and Gini coefficient. Using the Cost of Basic Needs approach, food and total poverty lines of the study area are Birr 187 and Birr 251 per month per adult respectively. Poverty profile of the town reveals that 31.70% head count, 8.9% poverty gap and 3.75% poverty gap square. Multinomial regression result indicates that deteriorating in social transition of household head’s is dominant.OLS regression results illustrate that female headed households, educational level of the household head and spouse have positive impact on welfare while family size, square age of household head, divorced and widowed headed households have negative effect to welfare. Except in few variables, most of OLS and probit results of welfare are consistent. Tobit model describes factors affecting poverty gap and poverty severity of the poor households. Accordingly, pensioner headship, family size and age square of household head aggravate the probability of falling in to poverty gap and poverty severity. But being petty trade household head, head education, ownership of property and service indices reduce the probability of falling to poverty severity. Using 3FGLS, the mean probability of vulnerable to poverty is 0.4 which ranges from 0.041 to 0.89. Welfare inequality of the entire population demonstrates that the bottom poor quintile shares only 6.37% of the total mean consumption expenditure while the top quintile takes 49.39%. Furthermore, using Lorenz curve analysis Gini coefficient accounts 0. 49 of total inequality. Factor decomposition of inequality typifies that property index and head social transition of household head take the greater share of 14.6% and 12.4% respectively.