ESTIMATING THE IMPACT OF SUSTAINABLE LIVELIHOOD OPTIONS ON POVERTY TRANSITION AMONG RURAL HOUSEHOLDS IN NIGERIA

Abstract

As concerns and investment to curb poverty continue to receive attention from different stakeholders, the survivability imperativeness through sustainable livelihood activities is vital to deterrent from poverty entry. Using a secondary data obtained from two waves of the National Household Survey (wave 2 and 3) data, the study estimate the impact of sustainable livelihood option son poverty transition among rural households in Nigeria. To achieve this, both descriptive statistics and multinomial endogenous treatment effect model were used to analyse the obtained dataset. The households were observed to obtain their livelihood from agricultural, agricultural wage employment, non-agricultural and non-agricultural wage employment. The result further showed that gender, household size, dependency ratio, membership of association, human development livelihood index, safety net, credit access, number of large ruminants, and policy-induced livelihood index significantly drive poverty transition in the study area. In conclusion, Nigeria is a federating unit consisting of 30 state with federal capital territory, despite the fact that most rural households in Nigeria rely heavily on agriculture as a means of livelihood, the study suggest that policies that will exit many rural household out of poverty should calcified through human development, resources peculiar to each federating unit and social inclusion.