ABSTRACT

This research work studied poverty reduction strategies and economic growth of Nigeria from 1980 to 2018. The major problem that inspired this research work is that inspite of the strong growth rate recorded in Nigeria; poverty has kept rising to the extent that nearly 100 million of her citizens live below the poverty line of $1.25 per day. The study sought to ascertain the extent to which the various efforts of the government towards tackling increasing poverty rate in Nigeria has helped to grow the economy. To achieve this major objective, two models were formulated; the first model used poverty rate, government expenditure on social services, human capital development, agricultural loans and agricultural labour input as the independent variables while growth rate of per capita income (GDP per capita) was the dependent variable. The second model used agricultural loans, agricultural labour input, human capital, government expenditure, discomfort index as the independent variables while poverty rate in Nigeria was the dependent variable. The Error Correction Model (ECM) was used to analyze the first model while the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model was used to analyze the second model. The findings showed that only human development index has a positive and significant long run impact on per capita GDP in Nigeria while poverty rate, government expenditure on social services and agricultural labour all increased per capita GDP in the long run. However, the short run analysis showed that all the poverty reduction indices have negative relationships with GDP per capita in the short run while only agricultural loans increased poverty rate in the short run. Consequently, the study concluded that government poverty reduction strategies moves especially in her expenditures on social services has not had the desired significant impact on the growth of the economy. The agriculture sector which is the major bridge through which poverty can be reduced among the populace still receives insignificant loans and low labour thereby plunging the economy into deep poverty. It was recommended that   government should increase her expenditures on social services as well as in increasing her budgetary allocations in favor of the educational and health sectors, as the findings showed that investment in these sectors will reduce poverty and ultimately increase economic growth in Nigeria.