Impact of Socio Economics Variables on Poverty: An Empirical Analysis for District Chitral of KPK Pakistan

Abstract

This study investigates the impact of socioeconomic variables on household poverty in Chitral valley, the largest district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistan. The household poverty index has been constructed while calculating multidimensional poverty index for each household. For this purpose, a representative sample of 252 households has been surveyed while distributing a questionnaire to each household. The data have been collected through stratified sampling technique and the collected data then analyzed while applying descriptive statistical tools and regression techniques. The regression analysis was done while taking explanatory variables as income of the household, the gender of household head, lives stock population of household, age of household head and dependence ratio of the household. Results of the regression analysis show that lives stock population and income of household have significant negative impact on household poverty. The results further reveal that dependency ratio has also significant positive impact on household poverty. Different diagnostics tests have also been applied in order to test the assumptions of the linear regression model and the results of all the diagnostics show the absence of econometric problems in the estimated model.