The study sought in-depth knowledge of the key factors that account for regional poverty
differentials in Uganda so as to contribute to more focused targeting of programmes for
the poor. The research objectives were: to estimate the national and regional food poverty
lines to identify poor households, to compare the socioeconomic and demographic
characteristics of the poor households between and within the regions, to compute poverty
indexes for Uganda based on national and regional food poverty lines, to identify the key
determinants of regional poverty, and to derive policy implications for poverty alleviation
in Uganda.With primary data from the Integrated Household Survey, 1992, the study
used the Greer–Thorbecke methodology to compute poverty lines and poverty indexes.
The logistic regression was used to analyse the key determinants of poverty and five
models were fitted (one national and four regional).
Northern Uganda was found to be the poorest region; it has the largest depth of poverty
and worst inequality. It is characterized by the poor having large mean household sizes,
least education, least mean household income, least expenditure on health, lowest chance
of child survival and highest concentration in the rural areas. Educational level of
household head, household size and migration status were found to be significant
determinants of poverty at multivariate levels.
The broad policy recommendation is that government should use regional poverty
lines for the planning and budgetary allocation process for effective poverty alleviation.