Rural health and labour supplies: Empirical evidence from the World Bank assisted agricultural development project in the Kwara State of Nigeria

The efforts made in this study are in two areas. First, an effort has been made to determine whether there are any health or labour supply differences between ADP and non-ADP households. Second, an effort has also been made to determine whether differences in health, housing and nutrition, if any, have an effect on labour supply. All the efforts are attempts to focus research attention on the Nigeria's resource endowment factor and at the same time assess the impact of rural infrastructure capital and thus the World Bank Assisted Agricultural Development Projects (ADP) on the rural Nigerian residents and their industry. Using 175 households, 50 from the ADP and 125 from the non-ADP areas, the descriptive statistic indicates strong mean significant differences for the descriptors of nutrition, housing and state of health among the two sample categories. The discriminant function strongly discriminates between the two sample groups while the multiple regression analysis establishes a causal relationship between the discriptors of rural healthy days and labour supply for the two sample data sets. The policy implication of the study is that the implementation of the ADP particularly the Ilorin, leads to the improvement of quality of life and greater infusion of high quality labour into the rural agricultural industry. Higher productivity and increased farm family income and enhanced rural life which results is a useful virile circle necessary for laying the bedrock for the rural development.