Social Welfare Analysis of Gender Inequality in Education and Employment: Ranking Gender Inequality in Rural and Urban Nigeria with Generalized Lorenz Curves

Abstract

This study analyzes the social welfare effect of gender inequality in human capital development (education and employment) across rural and urban Nigeria. Using Nigeria most recent data set on labour force survey by NBS, which captures labour force participation by gender, gender unemployment by educational level and sector, gender schooling ratio, gender population growth rate and economic active participation by gender this study investigated how differently, gender inequality in education and employment affects women across rural and urban regions. To unravel this, we adopted Shorrock and Alkinson Generalized Lorenz approach to welfare dominance and inequality decomposition. We ranked gender inequality on education and employment by rural and urban. The major finding is that female unemployment by educational level is predominant in the urban sectors compared to the rural sectors. Other findings are that gender inequality is higher in labour force participation when compared with education in Nigeria. We therefore recommend that for Nigeria steady economic growth to translate positively to socioeconomic of her citizens, the war against gender inequality should go beyond sectoral or zone, it should be generally pursued. Also for the goals of the Transformation Agenda to be fully realised, the current situation of women must be factored into policy formulation and implementation.