Exploring the Root Causes of Rural Poverty in Fars Province Using Fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis

The notion of poverty alleviation has become increasingly popular in recent decades. Exploring this issue depends on deep understanding of the causes of rural poverty. However, there is no consensus about root causes of this complicated and multi-dimensional phenomenon. A commonly neglected feature of poverty especially in rural poverty is that this concept relates to more than one set of overall accepted rules. This paper analyzes the roots of rural poverty using the Fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (FsQCA) to cover all the relevant sets of conditions. A simple random sampling technique was used to collect data from a representative sample of rural residents of Darab and Rostam counties, Fars province. A total of 211 farm families were interviewed using a questionnaire in 2014 to 2015. An empirical analysis of two primary and reduplicative study in Fars province indicated that two complex paths have higher coverage and consistency. The first pathway showed that a set of human, social, economic, physical and environmental factors were associated with rural poverty. Meanwhile, the second path revealed that human, economic, physical, environmental and life satisfaction factors were identifiers for the paths leading to rural poverty. Recommendations and implications are offered to alleviate rural poverty.