Comparison of Poverty among Peri-Urban Farming Households in Uyo, Nigeria

Abstract

Rapid urbanization is being accompanied by a phenomenon known as the urbanization of poverty. Though urban poverty is often overlooked, it is even more acute than rural poverty and threatens to become worse as the rural exodus increases. This study compares poverty among peri-urban households by decomposing different poverty groups into sub-groups using Foster, Greer and Thorbecke weighted poverty measure. With the aid of well-structured questionnaire, 80 peri-urban households were sampled through two stage procedure. Results reveal that 0.48 of peri-urban farming households were impoverished whereas the poorest of the poor were 0.29. A comparison of poverty shows that male headed households were poorer than female headed households. Findings further reveal that the incidence of poverty increased with age and household size, but decreases with years of formal education