Browsing by Author "Karunarathna, B. M. N. C."

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    Determinants of Poverty in Tea Estate Workers in Nuwara Eliya District
    (Uva Wellassa University of Sri Lanka, 2015) Wijerathne, K. M. D. L.; Dharmadasa, R. A. P. I. S.; Shyamalie, H. W.; Karunarathna, B. M. N. C.; Pilapitiya, H. M. C. G.
    As a developing country, poverty is a major issue in Sri Lanka. The poverty or poor is expressed as lack of access to basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education etc. The poverty line specifies the minimum standard of living condition in the society to which everybody should be entitled. However, income level and other facilities available to people in the different sectors may vary. Also, the household living standard has a strong relationship with the poverty of the people. NuwaraEliya district is one of the major tea growing areas in Sri Lanka. Of the total population in NuwaraEliya district (706,588), 53.6 % of the population is belonged to estate sector (Central Bank, 2013). Knowing the socio-economic factors which affect to poverty in estate sector is vital to find the strategies for improving their living conditions. Therefore, this study attempts to identify the determinants of poverty in estate sector. The results of the study will be useful to make policies and suggestions to improve their living conditions of estate workers in NuwaraEliya district. Methodology The present study was conducted in tea growing locations of NuwaraEliya district. There are five District Secretariat (DS) divisions in NuwaraEliya District and of them, NuwaraEliya DS division was purposely selected for the study, since the highest estate population is recorded in this DS division (Central Bank, 2013). Multi stage sampling method was used for the selection of tea estates and systematic sampling technique was used to select the respondents. Out of seventy two GramaNiladari divisions, four GramaNiladari divisions were randomly selected. An estate was randomly selected from each selected GramaNiladhari division. Fifty workers were selected from each estate for the survey and total sample size was 200 estate workers. Primary data relating to various parameters of socio - economic status were gathered through well designed and pre tested questionnaire. The secondary information was collected from various published/unpublished sources. Tabular and regression techniques were employed to analyse the data. Binary Logistic regression model was employed to identify the determinants of poverty. A poverty level (poor or non - poor) was decided by using the real per capita expenditure as a cut off point corresponding to Sri Lanka Official Poverty Line (OPL) Rs. 3924 in 2014 August (Department of Censes and Statistic, 2014).