Gender And Poverty Allevation In Nigeria
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Date
2010-10-27
Authors
Aluko, O.E
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Abstract
Poverty level in Nigeria has been extremely high, with about two thirds of the population
below the poverty line in 1996 (FOS, 1999). The situation would have been worse but for
the damping effect the period 1985 to 1992 had on poverty, when the rising trend of the
earlier period was reversed, before the upward movement resumed again. Specifically,
poverty level went up 50% between 1980 and 1985, going from 28.1% to 46.3%. Between
1985)md 1992, there was a drop of about 4 percentage points to 42.7%. However, by 1996,
the revel jumped to 65.6%, an increase of more than 50% of the 1992 figures.
Over the 16-year period 1980 to 1996, female-headed households were slightly better off
poverty wise than their male counterparts. In 1980 the poverty levels were 26.9% and
29.2% respectively, a gap of 2% . In 1985, the gap had increased to 9% but came down
slightly to 5% in 1992. However, the gap widened again to 8% in 1996. According to che
Federal Office of Statistics (1999), the analysis showed that the major factor leading to this
result is the fact that the average size of female : eaded households is generally smaller
than that oftheir male counterparts. Consequently, the per capita consumption (pee) (which
is the basis of poverty computation) in female-headed households is higher than of maleheaded households. However, the comparison here is in respect of the gender of heads of
household and not the gender of all persons in general.
Description
Conference Paper
Keywords
Gender, Poverty , Population
Citation
Aluko, O. E (2010) Gender And Poverty Allevation In Nigeria. Being a Paper Presented At 31st Annual Conference Of The NITP In Minna, Niger State.