Poverty in Nigeria

Simon Appleton, Andrew McKay and Babatunde Adewumi Alayande

Chapter 14 in Economic Policy Options for a Prosperous Nigeria, 2008, pp 331-371 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Nigeria has a reputation in popular discussion as being fantastically unequal. Sala-i-Martin (2006: 364) reviews the world distribution of income and finds Nigeria ‘perhaps the most interesting case’. His estimates, based on national accounts together with survey estimates of income distribution, imply that mean income per capita has fallen since 1970 while inequality has ‘exploded’. He surmises that the proportion of people living below one dollar a day has increased (to 70 per cent), but that the income of the more affluent has also increased. He posits that the distribution of income in Nigeria has become bimodal, with a few non-poor separating from the mass of the poor (see Figure 2 of Subramanian and Sala-i-Martin, 2003). An in-depth Oxfam study of poverty in Nigeria cites the UNDP Nigeria 2000/2001 Human Development Report as explaining that Nigeria has a Gini coefficient ‘close to one’ (Oxfam, 2003: 7). Such perceptions of extreme inequality are supported by the contrast between the large oil revenues Nigeria earns and the fragile livelihoods most of its citizens eke out in smallholder agriculture and non-farm self-employment. Oil money has allowed the creation of a large public sector, whose workers are seen as relatively privileged. Moreover, oil is widely seen as having fostered corruption and capital flight, contributing to the creation of an affluent, internationally mobile elite.

Keywords: Public Sector; Poverty Line; Quantile Regression; Absolute Poverty; Adult Equivalent (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-58319-1_15

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9780230583191

DOI: 10.1057/9780230583191_15

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().