ABSTRACT

The aim of this research work is to analyse the youth perception of rural residency and employment in Ikwuano Local Government Area of Abia State its objectives were to describe the personal characteristics of respondents; identify the forms of employment available for youths in the study area and the ones preferred by the respondents; Ascertain the perception of the respondents towards being employed in the rural areas; ascertain the perception of the respondents towards rural residency and employment and to make recommendation based on the findings of the study. Sixty youths contributed the sample size. Data were collected through interview socio and questionnaires and were analysed using percentages, frequencies, means and the logit multi nominal regression model. Sixty seven percent of the respondents were females 53% of the respondents were students, 25% of the respondents were the age of 21 -25years the respondents have a mean age of 25.58 years. Fifty percent of the respondents had financial support from their parents regularly only 5% of the respondents have a regular support and assistance from their relatives. 31.7% out of 48% of the respondents engaged in poultry production based their production in the rural area. 16.7 % of the the respondents are civil servants and their source of employment were located in the urban area. Civil Service had the mean preference score (4.03) whereas carpentry and GSM repairs had mean preference scores of (2.48) and (2.45) respectively. 41% of the respondents prefer to engage in restaurant in the urban areas.The respondents agreed in 7 out of 8 statements. Result from the study indicates that the respondents do not have need for a post office as well as a need for a bus stop to enhance their enterprises in the rural areas. The logit cox and snell (R2) was 0.78 which indicates that 78.2% of the variations in the dependent variable is explained by the variations in the independent variables in the model. All the independent variables were positively related to perception and significant at 1% level of significance.