LADY HARDING

POVERTY IN NIGERIA

Poverty is being defined as the inability to achieve a certain minimal standard of living that contributes economy’s growth in Nigeria. In 1986 Nigeria economics was introduced by the government in a structural adjustment programme includes exchange rate monetary, budgetary and financial reforms. These reforms were expected to revitalize the economy’s growth and improvement in equity of our country.

Poverty based on minimum nutritional standard that is converted into food expenses to which certain expenditure for clothing and shelter .The real growth improvement rate became effective after 1988 which led to the widespread view which improvement had produced positive results. The point is whether and to what extent structural adjustment reforms alleviated poverty in Nigeria. It is not enough to know whether inequality or declined during reform period.

It is better to know if such a change resulted polarization, or the wide gap between the poor and the rich. If there is polarization, the resultant social tension may have implications for the sustainability of the reform measures. To try to find a more definitive answer. This research investigated inequality and poverty in Nigeria using data from national household income surveys. The main target was to examine how poverty has been reduced by the policies introduced during the period, and particularly the pattern of growth these policies engendered.

The widening gap between the poor and the non- poor, termed polarization and characterized by the disappearance of the middle class, was of particular interest. The study used the food energy intake method, a variant of the absolute poverty approach linking aggregate macroeconomic variables to the micro level distribution of income and poverty poses a problem. There is several method of measuring the linkage. One approach analyses the effect of exchange rate devaluation and its impact on real wages.

As long is income is generally more equally distributed than return to capital, a devaluation would improve income distribution and thus poverty. Other approaches that seek to measure the standard of living by establishing a poverty line that delineates the poor and the rich. The most popular are the food energy intake approach and the cost of basic needs approach. These methods are anchored on estimating the cost or attaining a predetermined level of energy food or calories intake. Other indexes measured the incidence depth and severity of poverty.

Using the head-count index, the study found that an increasing number of Nigerians were living in absolute poverty over the study periods:38% in 1985, 43% in 1992 and 47% in 1996. Poverty is higher in rural areas than in urban areas. The corresponding numbers are 38%, 35%and 37% in urban areas, and 41%, 49% and 51% in rural areas. The male and female distribution of poverty is consistent with the evidence from earlier studies that suggest that poverty is more pronounced among male- headed households. While it is also known that male household slipped deeper into poverty while their female counterparts faired slightly better.

Poverty incidence actually improved in the southern zones in the 1990s but deteriorated in the North. In the South it is higher in Akwa – Ibom, Delta and Edo states and in the North in Bauchi, Jigawa and Yobe. The variation need to pay attention to regional differences when designing policy intervention to alleviate poverty. In decomposing the various contributions to poverty in Nigeria the North constitutes the bulk of poverty in Nigeria.

The study also showed that the effect of growth on poverty was more pronounced in urban areas. The growth over the period actually seemed to have worsened poverty. However, the relatively lower growth may have contributed marginally to poverty reduction, there are some other conditions to consider, however the former period coincided with the introduction and immediate aftermath of structural adjustment. In the later period, on the other hand a nationwide upward view of salaries in 1992 raised the income level of a large section of the labor force, which could explain the somewhat lower incidence of poverty in that period.

This suggests that the so called itricle downi phenomenon, underlying the view that growth improves poverty and inequality. This may be because much of the growth is driven by the oil and mining sectors polarization. Its distribution appears to contribute to increase poverty. Third socio-economic infrastructural facilities with the widely acknowledged relationship between education and poverty.