Urban poverty and livelihood strategies a study of poor households in Addis Ababa city Ethiopia

Abstract

The thesis explores urban poverty and strategies of livelihood for urban poor households in the slum neighbourhoods of Addis Ababa city, Ethiopia. The study tries to contribute towards the basic understanding and analysis of unprecedented and rapid urbanization in the global south, the consequent social influences, and the way it keeps creating poor neighbourhoods with new faces of urban poverty. Its focus is the analysis of poverty and the way linked with livelihood strategies and how those livelihood strategies manifest the status of poor households in the linkage. The analysis mainly focuses on the social questions emanating from poverty that have long been neglected in economic approach-dominated studies. It addresses those social questions through the Urban Livelihoods Framework as an analytical approach to the study believing the fact that the framework is all-embracing and covers factors other than income in its examination of poverty. It includes additional aspects like access to resources and opportunities, coping with shocks, negotiating social relationships within the household and managing social linkages and associations among residents. The research is based on primary sources of data collected from poor neighbourhoods in Addis Ababa city, Ethiopia. Three hundred ninety-four (394) poor households were surveyed using an interview schedule to explore contributing causes, income and expenditure, access to housing and other social services (health and education), employment, main livelihoods and livelihood failures, livelihood shocks and strategies to withstand it and social networking s. The quantitative data is supplemented by qualitative data collected through thirty (30) in-depth interviews with poor households. The research result showed out that poverty in Addis Ababa city can be described not in terms of a single cause and implies no single solution.