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I 4 PROFILE OF INCOMES AND POVERTY IN TANZANIA ^The mos t recen t Worl d Ban k World Development Report (1990 ) rank s Tanzania as the fourth-poorest country of the world, with a 1988 per capita income of only US$ 160 . Yet in 1980, at the end of a decade of shocks and economic decline, the International Labour Office(ILO 1982) estimated that in the urban areas only about 15 percent of households might be considered as falling below a poverty line. In the rural areas, the estimate was about 25-30 percent, for a countrywide total of about 25 percent. This is not a very high estimate, compared to other developing country poverty levels. In this chapter, we show that poverty i s substantially greate r than previously estimated . We present amore up-to-date profile of poverty in Tanzania mainland, emphasizing its structural aspects. Recent household surveys on which to base analysis of patterns of income and consumption are not available in Tanzania. However, there is a very detailed national household survey that was done in 1976/77, the results of which became available only recently. It is very helpful in giving the structure of Tanzanian households. This is especially so because there was another such survey in 1969, with which the 1976/77 survey can be compared. Furthermore, there exist two detailed rural income surveys (Collier et al. 1986; Bevan et al. 1989 ) done in 1979/80 and 1983, respectively, which can also be used for comparative pur58 Profile of Incomesand Poverty in Tanzania 5 9 poses, despite the fact that they were not representative of the entire country but only certain regions. These four sources provide the bulk of the information for our analysis. The nex t sectio n outline s som e basi c demographi c characteristic s o f th e Tanzanian household. In the following sectio n the structure and sources of rural and urban incomes are analyzed. We also analyze income differentiation and we show that income in Tanzania is quite equitably distributed, compared with other countries. In the following section , we discuss the observed pattern of incom e differentiation. Subsequentl y we analyze patterns of consumption among different types of households, and we show that most of the food intake of the poor in both rural and urban areas comes out of subsistence production. We compute an absolute poverty line and estimate that a very substantial number of Tanzanian households appear to have expenditures below it. (We also estimate poverty lines for every year until 198 9 and show that they amounted to less than even senior civil servan t salarie s i n 1989. ) I n th e fina l sectio n w e summariz e ou r mai n conclusions. POPULATION AND SOME HOUSEHOLD CHARACTERISTICS According to the 1988 population census, the population of mainland Tanzania was 22,533.8 thousand people, and the average household size was 5.3, implying that there were about 4,252 thousand households. The 1978 census revealed a population o f 17,036. 5 thousand , compose d o f 3,44 2 thousan d households , with an average of 4.9 members. The 1967 census had revealed a population of 11,958.7 thousan d an d a n averag e househol d siz e o f 4.5 . Whil e th e averag e intercensal population growth rate between 197 8 and 198 8 has declined to 2.8 percent from 3.2 percent between 1967 and 1978, the average size of households seems t o have increased . I t is not clear whether this trend is real o r due to a different definitio n of the household in the different censu s years. Most of the Tanzanian population lives in rural areas. Table 1 8 exhibits the number of households reported as rural and as urban in the 197 8 census and in the 1976/7 7 Househol d Budge t Surve y (HBS) , b y region . Th e 198 8 censu s preliminary report does not distinguish between rural and urban households. The 1978 census reports 13 percent more households for the mainland, compared with the 1976/77 HBS, the overreporting being similar for the rural and urban categories . The 197 8 census, however, reported an average household siz e of 4.9 fo r the whole country, while in theHBS it was 5.65. The result is that theHBS implied a tota l populatio n i...

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