Widowhood and multidimensional poverty: Evidence from Nigeria

Abstract

Poverty among widows has received little empirical attention in Africa despite women's severe vulnerability to death shock. We provided empirical evidence on widow households' transition in and out of poverty and factors influencing their probability of being in poverty. The Markov transition probabilities show moderate but increasing positive transitions for severely poor widows. Non-poor widows are stayers who primarily sustain their non-poor class. The ordered logit estimation shows that higher dependency ratio increases the chances of a widow being severely poor. Being an older widow and having literacy skills reduced the probability that a widow household will be severely poor. Household size and dependency ratio are noted to play important roles in the probability of transitions across poverty classes as shown by the estimated multinomial logit model. These findings are robust to alternative poverty measure, estimation method and different set of weights. Generally, the results echo the need for social safety nets to cushion widows' financial strains. Life insurance policy for spouses, increased sensitization of widows of their rights and adult education programmes targeted at widows could mitigate the negative impact of widowhood on women.