Associations between Poverty and Socio-economic Variables in a Typical Tswana Rural Village: New Insights

This paper reports on and analyzes primary survey data obtained from a survey of household heads on the rural village of Nshakazhogwe, a typical rural village in northeast Botswana. It examines the associations between the incidence of poverty of household heads in this village and the values of several socio-economic variables. The socio-economic variables considered are the age of the household head, the level of their educational attainment, their gender, the number of sources from which they obtain their income, whether or not they have some wage employment, whether they receive income transfers privately or from the government, whether they conduct a home business and whether or not they obtain income from sales of livestock, crops or natural resources. Some associations are found to be statistically insignificant but not all. The data enables a life cycle of the likely incidence of poverty of household heads to be derived. Some of our results differ from those suggested by the relevant literature. For example, the gender of the household head is not associated significantly with the incidence of poverty, neither is involvement or otherwise in wage employment, and a positive (but statistically insignificant) association is found to exist between the level of educational attainment and the incidence of poverty. Reasons for these and the other observed relationships are outlined. Further data gathering and analysis would be desirable to substantiate the hypotheses that emerge from this paper.