Author(s)

Abdolrasul Shirvanian, Mohammad Bakhshoodeh

Agricultural Economics, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran.

In this study, rural poverty in Iran is investigated applying a multidimensional approach, association rules mining technique, and Levine, F and Tukey tests to household data of 2008. The results indicate that poverty in its multi-dimensions is an epidemic problem in rural Iran. The results also exhibit that there are 11 patterns of poverty in the rural areas including four main patterns with 99.62% coverage and seven sub-patterns with nearly 0.38% coverage. In these patterns, housing and household education are the most important dimensions of poverty and income poverty is the least important dimension. Government income support policy to households, in enforcement the law of targeting subsidies, cannot be regarded as pro poor policy but it follows other political aspects.

Multidimensional Poverty Approach; Rural Poverty; Data Mining; Iran

Shirvanian, A. and Bakhshoodeh, M. (2012) Investigating poverty in rural Iran: The multidimensional poverty approach. Agricultural Sciences, 3, 640-650. doi: 10.4236/as.2012.35077.