Abstract:
Poverty and income inequality have been a recurring challenge in the global space for more than
five decades. While these challenges have been declining globally, they have remained unabated
and rising in Nigeria; thus, making Nigeria tagged as their destination. Thus, the research set out
to evaluate the poverty and inequality in Nigeria using a household four-wave of secondary panel
data of 4,000 nationally representative households of the Nigeria General Household Survey
GHS - Panel collected by the National Bureau of Statistics from 2010 to 2019. Analytical tools
used were descriptive statistics, the Foster-Greer-Thorbecke (FGT) poverty index, Lorenz’s
curve, and the Gini coefficient. The results of the Foster-Greer-Thorbecke poverty headcount
showed that over 50% of all the respondents remained under the poverty line throughout the four
waves, thus indicating the prevalence of chronic poverty rather than transient poverty during the
period. The general poverty depth ranged from 0.21 to 0.23 and the poverty severity ranged
from 0.11 to 0.12. The Gini coefficient of inequality for total expenditure ranged from 0.39 to
0.44 with higher sectoral inequality. The results showed that Nigeria had chronic poverty,
moderate poverty depth, and severity; and moderate inequality. Therefore, with strong political
will and consistently right policies, Nigeria can exit extreme poverty. This work unraveled the
reason behind the persistently high poverty status and inequality of Nigeria and has revealed the
path not taken, which if done would enable Nigeria to exit extreme poverty and hunger. |
