Initial Persistence of Poverty in Rural versus Urban Areas between 1966 and 1976

Kanaya Aradi, The College of Wooster

Abstract

This study analyses and compares the variation in income for poor people living in urban and rural areas, for the years 1966 to 1976. The aim is to bring out any differences in the persistence of poverty between these two subsamples. The results from the study show lower variation in income for urban poor people than for rural poor people. Urban families that had income levels below the poverty line had low variations in income over the years. The study was limited by the time available to conduct it in, so that only income variation was studied. It was therefore impossible to reach a conclusion about the differential occurrence of poverty and its persistence across generatons for urban and rural families .