Livelihood Diversification and Poverty Among Rural Households in the Capricorn District, Limpopo, South Africa

Livelihood diversification has become the backbone for many of the households in rural areas of South Africa and it is perceived as a strategy to cope with the growing population and the rapidly increasing poverty rate. A sizeable number of rural households in South Africa combine two or more jobs to generate more income as possible to enhance their poverty status. Therefore this study was conducted to examine the nexus between poverty and diversification of livelihoods and to ascertain whether the different livelihood diversification strategies engaged in make rural households better-off or worse-off in the study area. A multi-stage and simple random sampling technique was employed to collect data from a sample of 216 respondents. Analytical techniques employed were descriptive statistics, FGT poverty index and the probit regression model. Eight variables were included as explanatory variables in the probit regression and only five variables (gender of the household head, marital status of the household head, years of formal education, household size and member of association) were found to be significant at 10%, 5%, 1%, 1% and 1% respectively. Based on the findings, the study recommends that diversification of livelihood strategies needs to be strengthened among rural household, investment in formal and vocational training should be intensified to increase rural household�s participation in more viable livelihood options in the study area. Keywords: Diversification, Livelihood opportunities, Poverty, Rural households, South Africa