Poverty and Welfare Status of Households in Easter Senatorial District of Kogi State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study advances to find out the welfare status and poverty situation of households in Eastern Senatorial District of Kogi State. Data for the study were collected using structured questionnaire / interview schedule of households. Three research questions and three hypotheses were stated for the study. The analysis of data was done by the use of Tobit regression model and Froster, Greer,Thorbeck (FGT) poverty analysis. The study discovered that the age of household heads, number of people with higher education, gender dummy, and number of hour's household work per week have positive impacts on household income and are significant at 5% levels of significance. This means that as these variables increase, the households income also increases, leading to a fall in poverty level. Also, it was discovered that location dummy and number of people not educated have negative impact on household income and statistically significant at 5% levels of significance. This means that these variables increases, household income will fall, leading to an increase in poverty among the households. On poverty situation in Kogi State, it was discovered that poverty level varies with different income sources with farm income having the highest level of poverty in the area. The study also revealed that ignoring farm income as the highest level of income among households in the senatorial District has greater effect on poverty severity and poverty gap than poverty headcount. Average poverty for instance increases by 23.3% of those above poverty line. This means that those in poverty are further pushed into poverty when farm income is ignored in poverty calculations.