A study on causes of poverty in rural area with a case study in Tambunan / Marylene Ervie Kamilus

Rural poverty remains a crucial part of the poverty picture in Sabah especially in the rural area. This paper used a rural dataset collected by interviewing method. Findings show that hardcore income poverty in rural areas reached most of the people in the selected study area. These families tend to: be large, and young, and to escape from poverty as they mature and children leave the household (life cycle); and be more likely to be small landholders than landless laborers. The structure of poverty in rural area shows that: larger households are poorer than smaller households, female headed households are poorer than male headed households, young households/household heads are poorer than older households/household heads, the poor tend to work more in the informal sector, and a greater share of those engaged in agriculture are poor. However, poverty is by no means strictly an agricultural problem. Furthermore, the deepest poverty is among the poorly educated and young household heads 'with children. Without interventions to improve their opportunities and assets, their plight is likely to worsen.