A survey on poverty in rural areas of Iran

Considering the importance of poverty reduction in sustainable development of a country and increase of social welfare level and on the other hand the importance of it to determine the eligible people for using of welfare services and programs, it is necessary to study in this field. The purpose of this paper is to estimate poverty line in rural areas of Iran from 1997 to 2013. For this purpose, by using costs and income household data from the Statistical Centre of Iran, at first calculation of food matrix, the amount of received energy in different deciles has been measured and then the absolute poverty line for rural areas based on 2300 calories has been estimated. The results revealed that during the 17 years, trend of absolute poverty line in rural areas of Iran has increased, so that, in rural area of Iran in the year 1997 Amount of poverty line was 71766 Rial and in 2013 was 2422220 which means the poverty line has become almost 33.7 times.