This paper studies the implications of farm–non-farm population shifts for household poverty outcomes in Cameroon. It uses total real expenditure per adult equivalent as the wellbeing indicator, as well as the 1996, 2001 and 2007 Cameroon household consumption surveys carried out by the government’s statistics office. Results indicate that both the within-sector and between-sector effects are important in accounting for the fall in poverty, with the former largely accounting for the decline in the incidence, depth and severity of poverty. The inter-sector effects portray the role played by farm–non-farm population shifts in alleviating poverty in the farm sector, while increasing it in the non-farm sector. This result also suggests the potential role of diversification-cum-migration in enhancing rural livelihood opportunities. The size of the within-farm effects has implications for public policy that encourages agricultural modernization as a sustainable means to engineer agricultural-based industrialization and which addresses the recurrent hikes in urban food prices.