Year: 2011
Type: article
Abstract: In order to achieve poverty reduction, both economic growth and equity have assumed a central place. It is against this background that this paper analyzes income growth and inequality elasticities of poverty in Nigeria over a period of time. The results are based on the analysis of secondary data obtained from National Consumer Survey of 1996 and 2003/2004 Nigeria Living Standard Survey. We use changes in mean per capita expenditure as a yardstick of economic growth and adopt simple but powerful ratio estimates of Economic Growth and Inequality elasticities of poverty. The growth elasticity of poverty indicates that 1 percent increase in income growth will lead to 0.624 percent reduction in poverty. The inequality elasticity of poverty shows that a decrease of inequality by 1 percent would have decreased poverty by just 0.34 percent. The result implies that what matters for poverty reduction is mainly accelerated economic growth, redistribution and reductions in inequality Keywords: Economic growth, elasticity, inequality, poverty reduction, rural Nigeria.
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2940945840