The Determinants of Rural Poverty in Nigeria

Most of the population of Nigeria is rural and agriculture is the mainstay of the impoverished people’s livelihood. This paper estimated the determinants of rural poverty in Nigeria using the Tobit regression model. Through the multistage sampling technique, primary data were obtained from 150 rural farming households using a questionnaire. The Result of Tobit regression analysis shows that increase in farm income, farm size and amount of agricultural loan led to a decrease in the level of poverty by 0.9953, 0.1220 and 0.4016 x 10-6 respectively. Membership of the cooperative by household heads, ownership of certain assets, access to extension services, and modern farming inputs, increase in educational attainment and male heads of households decreased the likelihood of being poor. Findings also reveal that except for access to loan that is elastic, the responsiveness of the probability and intensity of poverty to dependency ratio, farming experience, farm size and income are inelastic.