A Study on Rural Poverty Using Inequality Decomposition in Western Hills of Nepal: A Case of Gulmi District

Involvement of higher proportion of economically active population in agriculture and laboring among the Occupational caste resulted into higher incidence of poverty, which is also severer and deeper. This resulted into as high as 71% incidence of poverty in Banjhkateri, purely remote village. The incidence, depth and severity of poverty are the highest among large family size households, illiterate households, and small land and livestock holding households. Share of income from agriculture, remittance, and salaried job shares is the most significant one contributing 46.1%, 23.3% and 19.0% of total income, respectively. However, income from salaried job and remittance has income disequalizing effect and also has higher factor inequality weight acting as the source of income inequality. Agriculture and laboring, upon which huge proportion of economically active population is engaged and entry is also not restricted, however has income equalizing effect. This suggests the need for promotion of labor-intensive agriculture as a better rural development policy in the rural Nepalese context. In the context of lack of well-defined working hours as well as minimum wage rate such rural development policies should be supplemented by formulation and effective enforcement of labor policy.