Abstract
Taraba State ranked eighth among the ten poorest states in Nigeria, this therefore calls for investigation into the determinants of household poverty status in Ardo-Kola local government area of Taraba state, Nigeria. The specific objectives of the study were to describe the socio-economic characteristics of the households, determine poverty status of the households, examine the factor influencing household’s poverty status and identify the copping strategies employed by household against poverty in the study area. Purposive and simple random sampling techniques were used in the study. Data were collected through administration of structure questionnaire to 87 respondents. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics, foster greer and thornback poverty model and probit regression. The result of the study revealed that majority (70.1%) of the respondents were male with mean age of the 39 years and majority (72.4%) were married. The results also showed that majority (82.8%) of the respondents were educated with the means family size of 8 persons. The mean farm size of 2.3 farming experience was 10 years. Only 26.4% of the respondents were members of a cooperative society. The result further revealed that the mean annual income of the respondents was N150, 265. The result shows that the household in the study area poor with poverty incidence, depth and severity of 0.61, 0.23 and 0.17 respectively. The finding revealed that marital status, membership of corporate society, farm size and dependency ratio influence the respondents poverty status. Also, skipping of meals, engaging in wage labour and borrowing of funds from friends and relations were the adopted strategies by the respondents. It was recommended that farmers should form or join cooperatives to enjoy the benefits accruable to members for better expansion of their production frontier.