| dc.description.abstract |
The main intent of the Villagization program is to collect a scattered settlement pattern of rural
populations onto a nucleated form of villages to sustainably supply rural communities with social
and economic infrastructures. so that they can improve their income which helps the communities to
overthrow rural poverty and chronic food insecurity and ensure the sustainability of the livelihood
and food security in rural areas. Thus, this study was aimed at analyzing the impacts of
villagization program on households’ income level in Gog district, Gambella region, western
Ethiopia. To achieve this objective primary and secondary data was collected from both villagized
and non-villagized households in the study area which has been analyzed both by descriptive
analysis and econometric models. Both the descriptive statistics and the propensity score matching
(PSM) results indicated that participation in villagization program has brought about a significant
and positive effect to villagized households.In this aspect, the descriptive statistics revealed that
villagized households have higher gross annual income, improved access to school, increased the
gross enrollment rate, increased access to health and sanitation facilities and increased
accessibilities to infrastructure facilities (all-weathered roads, potable drinking water) as compared
to the non-villagized households. The propensity score matching (PSM) results confirmed that the
existence of a positive and additional annual gross income of 6351 birr for the villagized
households as compared to the non-villagized households. This indicates that, on average,
villagized households earn 22% more gross annual income as compared to the non-villagized
households.Besides, the maximum likelihood estimate of the logit model result shows that,
participation in villagization program was significantly and positively influenced byfamily size,
dependency ratio, perception of the household head towards the program,education status of the
household head and access to irrigation whereas livestock holding (TLU): rain-fed farm size and
participating in off-farm activities influenced participation in villagization program negatively.
Generally, the program has a major contribution to the socioeconomic and infrastructure
improvements in rural areas, particularly annual income. Thus, the sustainability of the program
has to be enhanced for the contribution to sustainable development of rural communities. |
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