Poverty in Ethiopia has been gendered phenomena that women were hardest hitrnby the problem oJpoverty. Various researches attempt to explain women's povertyrnin ,'elation to economic situations. Nonetheless. there is no or Jew researchrnconducted on demographic responses oj women's poverty. ThereJore. this paperrnattempted to fill the gap considering the demographic responses in terms oj Jamilyrnsize. intention to migration. morbidity. marital status and Jamily planning. Therndata were collected from 422 women in Koife- Keranio sub city. Kebele 02/03 onrnthe bases oj purposive and random sampling techniques. According to therndescriptive analysis. most (68.5%) women have low monthly income less than 260rnBi'T. which is below poverty line based on the current exchange rate. Moreover.rnmajority oj them live in poor housing conditions that were constructed Jrom poorrnmaterials. In addition to that. 2.7 %oj women experienced an early marriage andrn22.3 % postponed marriage as result oj poverty. Further more. Chi square test ojrnindep endency was administered in order to identiJy any association that mightrnexist between poverty status oj women and various ranges oj demographicrnresponses to poverty. According to the Chi square test. morbidity. Jamily size andrnintention to move were Jound to have significant associations with poverty level ojrnwomen. The multivariate log istic "egression model revealed that respondents withrnbetter educational attainment have more intention to migrate as comparedrnrespondents with low educational attainment. The result oj multivariate logis ticrnregressionJor contraceptive use revealed that those respondents with educationalrnattainment oj primruy and secondary and above use contraceptives 1.902 andrn3.851 times greater respectively as compared to respondents with out schooling.rnIn general. any poverty reduction strategy should take into account therndemographic chru'acteristics oj poor women accordingly; a progress can be madernto alleviate the women's poverty in particular and at societal level in general. In Ethiopia's tradition, the proper place women is said to be at home, andrnhusbands have more power than wives do in the control of family resource.rnIt is also observed that the members do not share the poverty of the poorrnfa mily equally. In poor family women often have responsible for managingrnthe money wh ere men control the main source of income. Therefore, womenrnprimarily bear the burden of family's povertyrnOn the other hand, poor women have highest fertility a t lower rate of caloIiernintake. At macro level interactions compIises the way in which householdsrnrespond to poverty. Family formations, migration strategies and the way inrnwhich child beaIing, dependence of and hou sehold s ize all directly affect thernwelfare (Rodger s, 1989).An important aspect of poverty may be reduced byrnhigh fertility that large family s ize may facilitate labour market s trategy b utrnat the same time high fertility may be responsible for low incomes.rnThe poor woman usua lly lacks assets as well as income and householdrnmateIiais. Poor woman us ually live in shanty a ,'ea and have too manyrnchildren. The number of children they bear determines their status inrnsociety, especially son s . Becau se of their social responsibilities and unequalrnstatus, women are particularly dependent on their children for secuIity.rnPoverty and low status of women are the pIimary cause of rapid populationrngrowth (!USSP, 1994).rnThe present internal structure of urban poverty in Addis Ababa in particularrns hows the fact that economic base and infrastructure levels are not inrnaccordance with population size . Additional popula tion would not onlyrnaggravate the a lready existed socio - economic problems such asrnunemployment, housing, infrastructure, etc, but a lso rapid populationrngrowth would raise a seIious problem to the city of Addis Ababa.rnAmong poor women especially women household heads seems to be the onesrnthat are the most serious ly affected by the problem in the city la rge numberrnof woman a re concentrated in the vaIious resource poor categoIies of urban population with out property and wealth. Gender based poverty assessmentsrnhave found that women hit hardest by the problem of the problem of the city.rnThe general fact shows that women earn low income. They are uneducated,rnmalnourished and over burdened with difficult tasks. Most of these womenrnget their income from working in inf01111al sector. These activities hinderrnthem from saving and investing in the ways that they can improve their lives.rnMany of them live in squatter and slum areas of the city with low facilitiesrn(eRDA, 1997). The present study attempts to analyse this situation focusingrnon the demographic response of women's poverty in Addis Ababa.