An analysis of multidimensional poverty and its determinants in rural Nigeria

Abstract

Human beings live to get happiness, livelihood, peace, security, safety, dignity and respect among others. Deprivation of any of these could be frustrating. Thus, attempts were made to determine multidimensional poverty index (MPI) of rural households and its decomposition by geo-political zones in Nigeria using the Alkire-Foster MPI approach. The result showed that the headcount poverty ratio H was 78.1% when K = 30 as compared to 58.8% for K = 40 and 23.6% for K = 60. The adjusted headcount ratio also suggested that 41% of the households were poor at K=30, whereas 34.2 and 16.7% of the households were considered poor for K=40 and K=60, respectively. The intensity of poverty from the result showed that the share of dimensions in which the poor were deprived increased with K, while the MPI of the households was decreasing with K. The result further revealed that living conditions contributed the largest value (59.9%) to the multidimensional poor, followed by education (14.3%), health (13.4%) and assets (12.4%). Therefore, the living condition and education of households should be prioritized in targeting poverty as it contributes largely to MPI across all the geopolitical zones in the country.