Few Assets: most of poor people are living in rural areas and most of them depend on agriculture for their livelihood, but most of them have few assets and landless. Landlessness is one of the main cause of poverty in Cambodia, because all the poor are depend on agriculture, so they could not generate money or get income if the have no land to do farming.
Low Income: Because of the poor have no ability to access education and health care system, so they are lack of opportunity to get employment in the city. They can only work in the primary sector; they have no ability to work in the secondary and tertiary sector. So they can only apply for worker or garment worker that provide less salary. On the other hand, in rural areas their in no sustain for the poor, if they depend on only natural resources and the most important, they have dependency people in their family (old men or women and children). So, they need to migrate to other place to find a job to support their livelihood.
Low Education attainment: Education in Cambodia is one of the worst in the world because there is not enough teacher, school, in rural areas or some urban; the school is far away from their house, and other wise some family is poor, they are inability to afford school fee for their children, so they let their children go to work out side for support their living. It is the main cause that mad children cannot go to school, and poverty remains with the children of the poor to take time off from work for their education. According to Cambodian Communities out of Crisis, the adult literacy rate for Cambodian men is 85.1% and women is only 70.9%
Educational levels completed by literate persons aged 25 years and over are “No educational level: 3.2%, Primary not completed: 47.2%, Primary: 26.8%,
Lower Secondary: 18.8%, Secondary/Diploma: 2.2%,
Beyond Secondary: 1.8%”