Livelihood as Poverty Coping Strategy of Rural Women in Song Local Government Area, Adamawa State

This research studied Livelihood as Poverty Coping Strategies among rural women in Song Local Government Area of Adamawa state, the research specifically identified their socio economic characteristics, assessed their livelihood activities, assessed the poverty coping strategies employed by rural women in the study area. The study had two hypotheses and they were stated in the null form, HO1 There is no significant relationship between livelihood activities and poverty coping strategies of rural women in Song Local Government Area of Adamawa State, hypothesis one There is no significant relationship between selected socio economic characteristics and poverty coping strategies of the rural women in Song Local Government Area of Adamawa State. The primary data was solicited through administration of a well structured interview schedule, to the respondents. the respondents were selected using the systematic random sampling. The data collected were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics were used. The study shows that, 70% are between the age of 28-43years, most of the respondents are married 55%, the result shows that 67% have the household have large family size of 6 and above, furthermore, 41.8% of the respondents had attained primary school. The research result reveals that the women in the study are involved in a lot of livelihood activities, such as piggery, brewing of local drink which include kunu, subo drink, fura da nunu, burkutu. They are also into sesame seed production, cowpea, bambara nuts, maize and groundnut production, trading, and the sales of fuel wood, hairdressing, pottery and sales of fruits. Women in the six districts are involved in series of strategic acts. They employed poverty coping strategies in both dry and wet season, women are involved in both monetary and non monetary, The descriptive statistics use of mean, frequency and percentage, for the objectives while the inferential statistic made use of the PPMC and the Chi-square. The result shows that there is no significant relationship between livelihood activities and poverty coping strategies of rural women in Song Local Government Area of Adamawa State. The result of the second hypotheses shows that there is significant relationship between respondents’ age ( =7.040, p < 0.05), and poverty coping strategy in the study area, while there is no significant relationship between marital status ( = 4.866 p= > 0.05), family size ( =0.466 p= > 0.05), and educational level ( = 3.625, p= > 0.05) and poverty coping strategy. It was recommendations that timely provision of inputs such as seed and fertilizers by government or Non-governmental Organizations at affordable rate, Facilitate for processing/storage, crops should be provided for the rural women to prevent them from selling off their farm produce immediately after harvest. They rural women should stop selling off their assets as a coping strategies but should strafe to get help or loan from external bodies.