Demographic Features of the Nigerian Household: Does It Matter For Poverty?

This paper examined the relationship between selected demographic characteristics of the household and poverty indicators across twelve states in the six geo - politics zones of Nigeria with a view to determining the extent to which such characteristics influence the poverty status of the household. Given the underlying theory, the modeling frame work of a three-variable case ordinary least square regression estimation technique was adopted in carrying out the study. The poverty measures used are poverty incidence and poverty gap while the demographic characteristics involved are household size and the proportion of household members in a specific age group. The estimates show cross-state variations in the contributions of the explanatory variables to each of poverty incidence and poverty gap. The first order ordinary least square test carried out shows that explanatory power is highest for Yobe (in the North - East) in the poverty incidence model while it is highest in Ebonyi (in the South - East) under the poverty gap model. In most cases, there is significant effect of the independent variables for the two models. It was thus suggested that government should ensure that intervention on poverty alleviation or reduction should focus on developing appropriate policy that targets household size such as through a better Planned Parenthood action.