Assessment of Multidimensional Poverty: A case of North Eastern and South Western States of Nigeria.

Abstract

The study investigates the multidimensional poverty of rural households in North Eastern and South Western state of Nigeria. Two stage sampling techniques were used to sample the respondents from the general household survey (GHS) wave 2 and a total sample of one thousand four hundred and sixty (1460) households were selected. The study adopted Alkire-Foster MPI approach to estimate the multidimensional poverty in the study area. From the result, more than 74% of the households in the study area were multidimensional poor with the adjusted headcount ratio of 37.5% which indicated multidimensional poor households when the cutoff (k) was 0.3. The result also shows that more than 90% of the households in the north eastern part of the country were multidimensional poor while south west accounted for about 56% . The overall headcount poverty shows an increasing trend as the cutoff increases; the result indicated high level of multidimensional poor households in the zones. Living condition contribution to MPI increases with rise in the cutoff (k); this indicated deprivation of infrastructures in terms of basic amenities that the households could have enjoyed. Therefore, the study recommends improvement in provision of basic amenities for the benefit of the people.