Which Nigerians are most likely to become poor?

Four out of ten Nigerians are poor. To avoid joining the swelling ranks of Nigerians steadily falling below the poverty line, you need to watch out for   these four factors.

According to a latest World Bank report, these four factors determine which Nigerians are most likely to be monetarily poor. 

Education & Family size

According to the World Bank, the poor in Nigeria are disproportionately young and undereducated and are products of large households.

Poverty Headcount Rate for Different Individual Characteristics and by Household Size in Nigeria in 2018/19

Young people and those with lower levels of education were more likely to live in poor households. Around 48.3 percent of children (those aged 14 years or less) lived in households below the poverty line in 2018/19, compared with 34.6 percent of working-age individuals (those aged 15–64 years) and 27.2 percent of seniors 

This is likely to be because fertility—and hence household size—are strongly correlated with poverty, so poverty is concentrated among those children that make up large households (see Panel B of Figure 15). Moreover, life expectancy is likely to be higher for non-poor individuals, explaining why relatively few seniors are poor. There was also a strong relationship between education levels and poverty: around 58.4 percent of those aged 16 or more without education lived in poor households, compared with 10.0 percent of those with tertiary or post-secondary education. 

Divorced, separated, or widowed women 

Poverty may impact men and women differently. While there was no overall gender difference in the poverty rate in 2018/19, this masks important differences between males and females at different points in the lifecycle. First, during the years when they are most likely to have children (between 20 and 44), women are more likely to be poor than men of the same age . (Culled from

 

Gender-poverty breakdown by age and marital status in Nigeria in 2018/19

This suggests that childcare and other household responsibilities may limit women’s economic opportunities, leaving them more prone to poverty. 

Second, divorced, separated, or widowed women were far more likely to be in poverty than men with the same marital status. Losing a spouse may be especially difficult for women, if they are still responsible for supporting their family, but have lost the economic means or the productive assets through which to do so.

Agriculture and poverty are closely tied 

Households that relied more on agricultural activities were more likely to live in poverty in 2018/19. Around 56.7 percent of Nigerians that lived in a household where the head engaged primarily in agriculture were poor, compared with 23.9 percent of those in a household where the head engaged primarily in wage work and 32.2 percent of those in a household where the head engaged primarily in non-farm enterprise work .

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