Poverty and Quality of Life of Agricultural Households in Phetchabun Province

Abstract

The purposes of this research are 1) to analyze the poverty ratio and levels of poverty by using Head-count Ratio and FGT-index. 2) to study the quality of life of agricultural household by using an Human Development Index (HDI) of UNDP. 3) to study the factors affecting poverty of agricultural household by using logistic regression. Data were collected using a questionnaire from 400 agricultural household.

The results showed that 11.50 percent of agricultural household has level income lower than the poverty line and has levels of poverty were 4.13 percent. The quality of life of most households is in the middle. In addition, factors affecting poverty of agricultural household is affected by head of the household are lower than compulsory education, planting rice or maize, a high number of dependents among the household members and decreasing Income from agriculture. Therefore, the government should encourage the expansion of education opportunity and encourage non-farm activities together with farm activities to reduce the poverty in agricultural household.