Despite rapid growth in aggregate real income, Botswana continues to face
endemic problems of unemployment, poverty and undernutrition in rural areas.
Both the depth of poverty and its dispersion are considerable among the poor,
especially in small villages and settlements. Poverty is a function of both the
level of income and the degree of inequality of wealth. These are significantly
related to differences in household size in adult equivalent, level of livestock
ownership, educational attainment of principal income earner, and proximity to
urban labour market. Poverty is gender differentiated, but it is more linked to
gender-specific differences in these determinants of living standards. A
simulation of how much these discriminates screen the poor shows that they are
capable to capture a greater percentage of the poor when they are applied in
combination than separately, but how they are combined is crucial in determining
the extent of targeting the poor.