Title: Water Related Poverty among Farm Households in Ebonyi State, Nigeria
Abstract: Water related poverty among farm households in Ebonyi State, Nigerian was studied.Multi-stage random sampling technique was used to select a total of 180 respondents.Primary data were collected with the use of structured questionnaire and interview schedule and analyzed with descriptive and inferential statistical tools.The result of the study shows that more males participated in agriculture than females.Analysis also indicated that majority of the farm households live below poverty line with about two-third (68.1%) of the farmers' mean per capita household income spent on food alone and one-third (31.8%) of the income on non-food items such as education, accommodations, clothing and transformation.The poverty indicator analysis shows that there was incidence of water borne diseases, infant mortalities, and poor primary school enrolment among others in the study area.The result also shows that the farmers were very poor and lacking in basic necessities of life.The results of the cross tabulation analysis, chisquare and multiple regression show that there was significant relationship between poverty indicator variables and water supply gap among the Farm households in the study area.It was recommended that Federal, State and Local Governments should consider water provision to the rural areas as top priority.This will reduce the incidence of water borne diseases, enhance the economic performance of the farmers, increase their productivity, and thus reduce poverty in the study area.