Rural poverty in Nigeria: Profile, determinants and exit paths

This paper studied the profile of rural poverty in Nigeria, what accounts for it, and what specific measures can be taken to reduce it, using the 1996 National Consumer Survey data set. The results show that by 1996, the proportion of the rural population living under the poverty line stood at 71.7 percent, up from 46 percent in 1992. The depth of poverty in rural Nigeria was 33 compared with 18.9 percent severity during the same year. A logistic regression model was estimated based on the data, with the probability of a household being poor as the dependent variable and a set of personal, demographic, economic and locational variables as explanatory variables. From the multivariate analysis the variables that are positively and significantly correlated with the probability of being poor in rural Nigeria are: household size, primary education level and below, rural occupations in the clerical, production and 'other' activities. The variables that are negatively and significantly correlated with the probability of being poor are: quadratic of household size, and residence in the central, south-east and south-south zones of rural Nigeria. Besides, strong evidence was found in this study to support the hypothesis of the feminization of rural poverty. This led to further estimation of the determinants of gendered poverty in rural Nigeria. The estimations show that male-headed households mirror the overall rural poverty results, while for female-headed households, the size of the household, education level of primary school and below, and residence in the central zone of Nigeria (unlike their male counterparts) are positively and significantly correlated with the probability of poverty. In addition, for female-headed households, the higher the age of the household head the lesser the probability of being poor, though less proportionately. Based on these results, a number of policy interventions necessary to reduce poverty in rural Nigeria are suggested.