Determinants of poverty in rural parts of Nepal: A study of western development region

Poverty, especially in rural parts of developing countries like Nepal persists despite of decades of development efforts. This study intends to analyze the major determinants of rural poverty. A two stage sampling method was applied to generate cross sectional data by randomly selecting 279 households from one Village Development Committees of six districts of Western Development Region of Nepal. In this study area thirty three percent of households were lying below poverty line as per the poverty scoring method. By applying binary logistic regression, the study identified age of household head, size of land holding, female's involvement in service, family occupation and caste as major determinants of rural poverty. Contrary to general view, remittance do not show any significant effect on rural poverty as per this study. So we can infer that poverty in rural parts of Nepal is entangled in structural and cultural web, and the remittance sent by migrant family members to rural households might have been siphoned off to urban pocket areas. With large chunk of young rural population engulfed by international labor market and existing socio-economic structures, the policy makers need to address the rural poverty via social and cultural aspects.