Demographic characteristics of poor households in Urban Ethiopia: the Case of Dire Dawa Town

The paper presents evidence on the links between poverty and demographic variables such as marriage patterns, household size and composition, fertility and mortality experiences, perception and preferences for children and also knowledge, attitude and practices of family planning, using household level data for Dire Dawa in the early 1990s. The study first identifies the poor using a subjective poverty line and then assesses their demographic characteristics. The results indicate that the poor have large family size high dependency of children and high fertility. However, compared to others poor households wished to have fewer children (and most of them also need no more additional children) which the study interpreted as a behavioral response to the increasing costs of children. However, the study found out that most of these women mad limited knowledge of family planning methods and even those who know about it had rarely practiced it. The results also show that, as one would expect, death rates were consistently higher among the poor and lower among the well-off.