Determinants of income inequality among rural households of Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria

Researches in the last two to three decades in Nigeria point to the fact that the citizens are still embroiled in poverty despite the huge resources that had been committed to poverty alleviation programmes. Absence of articulated policy on income distribution had prevented the ‘trickling down’ of the beneficial effects of the little growth achieved over the years. This study focused on the analysis of the determinants of income inequality in rural households of Ibadan, Oyo State. Primary data was collected from 120 rural households in two local governments using questionnaire and employing a 3-stage sampling procedure. Gini coefficient was used as a measure of inequality. In addition, Shapley approach was used in decomposing the inequality index in a regression-based context to determine the contribution of the various factors. Results show that there was high inequality in the income distribution of the rural households, which was reflected in the 0.5499 Gini coefficient value. The results further reveal that education was the only inequality-decreasing factor with household size contributing most (29.8%) to increasing inequality. Marital status, land size and agricultural credit also had inequality-increasing effects with the magnitude of marital status (26.0%) being close to that of household size. Government should therefore enhance the inequality-decreasing effects of education by investing more in human capital development of the rural households

Determinants of Vulnerability to Food Insecurity among Rural Households in Ekiti State, Nigeria

Assessing vulnerability to food insecurity is instrumental to addressing food security challenges in developing countries. Food production rate in Nigeria is not keeping pace with its population growth rate and this is a serious case for concern with respect to food availability to feed the teeming population. Against this backdrop, this study examined the determinants of vulnerability to food insecurity in Ekiti Sate, Nigeria by applying statistical and econometric tools. Three-stage random sampling procedure was used to elicit cross-sectional data from a total of 150 rural households across 5 local government areas (LGAs) of Ekiti State using semi-structured questionnaire. The Coping Strategy Index (CSI) was used to assess vulnerability to food insecurity status of the households and ordered logit regression was used to identify the factors affecting vulnerability. Findings revealed that 35.33% of the households were moderately vulnerable, while 33.33% and 31.33% were mildly and severely vulnerable, respectively in the study area. Borrowing food, eating seed stock, begging for food and reducing meals were the major coping strategies adopted by the households. Regression results show that out of the 10 significant variables, age of household head, number of dependents, non-food expenditure and number of coping strategies positively influenced vulnerability while being married, educational level, farm income and off-farm occupation negatively influenced vulnerability to food insecurity among the households. The study concluded that policies that address capacity building, increased rural income and its source diversification are likely to enhance resilience of rural farming households in the study area