ABSTRACT

This study analyzed poverty and living conditions in Nigeria using the fuzzy set, a multidimensional analytical approach. The essence is to fill the gap in knowledge that was created by the traditional uni-diinensional measures of deprivation which is based on poverty lines, estimated exclusively on the basis of monetary variables such as income/consumption. The study combines monetary and non-monetary, qualitative and quantitative variables/indicators including housing condition, possession of durable goods, equivalent disposable income and expenditure, together with a number of welfare measures in its' deprivation estimates The objectives of the study examined household and living conditions with respect to quality of housing, sources of energy for cooking, lighting, sanitation and water supply. Others were to analyse multidimensional deprivation and construct a composite index for the country as well as compare poverty distribution across the geopolitical zones, and between rural and urban dwellers using fuzzy set. The study used micro data obtained from the Nigerian living standard survey of 2004/05 which was published in 2007 with technical assistance of the DFID and World Bank. The results of the estimates of the membership functions (MFs) depicting the levels of deprivation for the various categories of deprivation indicators show a composite deprivation degree of 0.2028 for the whole country and thus, the poverty level for the country could be said to be 20.28 percent. This value is considerably lower than that of the head count index of 0.547 or 54.7 percent which is purely monetary and unidimensional. This trend of results is consistent with the fuzzy set results showing deprivation indices for all the geopolitical zones/regions as being smaller than the indices from the result of the head count index which was based only on income. This goes to say that; in view of the attributes so considered, Nigerians are less deprived than was shown by the head count index. Considering the various deprivation characteristics, the results show high deprivation degrees in seemingly "non-essential" items such as TV, Refrigerator, Video, Sewing Machine, etc and other household durables compared with other essential household items such as shelter, education, health, food, etc. Along urban-rural divide, the rural dwellers were more deprived, for all the attributes considered, to the tune of 23.97°/h as against the urban with a deprivation level of 19.47%, and the difference in their poverty levels was significant when tested at 5% probability level using Z-statistic. This implies that for any antipoverty intervention programme or policy, greater emphasis should be placed on the rural than the urban areas. The geopolitical zones of Nigeria/regions show different deprivation levels for the varying attributes so considered. The South East zone was the least with an index of 0.1619, followed by the South-West zone (0.1789), South —South zone (0.1877), NorthCentral zone (0.2447), North-west zone (0.2765) and North-East zone (0.2609) respectively. In order to strengthen this result of varying deprivation indices across the zones, we went further to test the existence of significant differences between the geopolitical zones' poverty level. This we did after double decomposition of the subattributes of poverty. The essence of double decomposition is to make for more specific and effective antipoverty policies. These results call for specific policies that are peculiar to the respective regions given their varying degrees of poverty. Furthermore, the results showed that the South East zone, though least deprived for the all the attributes taken together, is not the least deprived when the attributes are examined individually, this was exemplified when health and education are considered separately as attributes. Here the South-Wes zone was the least deprived. Results of this nature portray the beauty of fuzzy set analytical approach. This is derivable from the fact that Nigerians (people) may not only be relatively income poor, but also more relatively deprived in other indices of social welfare as the study has shown. This evidence negates the one-size fits-all income based poverty reduction programme that is often applied because of the use of a single indicator (income),but emphasises on-target, arid specific poverty reduction programmes given the deprivation level and indicators.