Multidimensional Poverty Status Correlates of Rural Households in Kaduna State of Nigeria

Abstract

After the work of Alkire on multidimensional poverty (MP), literature exhibit a paradigm shift in the methodological approach of investigating poverty in the society. A shift from only income- economic approach to a social approach that encapsulates a wider livelihood dimensions- education, health, and standard of living has taken a lead in the literature of poverty. Consequently, in view of this methodological gap in the study area, this research on MP status of rural households was undertaken to serve as one-stop solution to the engine growth of rural economy. Using a multi-stage sampling technique, a total of 120 households is selected and information elicitation was done by the use of well-structured questionnaire complemented with interview schedule in the year 2022. Besides, the collected information was synthesized with the aid of both descriptive and inferential statistics. Empirically, the study area is populated by an economic viable and healthy labor force, literate, agrarian, and technologically exposed, globally integrated and had a viable social capital pool. However, the rural population is characterized by a vulnerable household size, credit paucity, gender stereotype, and cultivation of uneconomic holdings. Furthermore, MP is riffed in the study area and the rural populace suffered deprivation in at least two dimensions. Besides, vulnerability to poverty owes unsustainable large household size and lackluster toward livelihood enhancement innovative measures. Moreover, an advisory service is the major driving force that regulates the intensity of MP intensity in the study area. Nevertheless, self-help, social, religious, and medical measures were the poverty coping strategies adopted in the study area. Therefore, the study calls for gender mainstreaming so as to arrest poverty vicious cycle among the women folk; and, provision of augmenting assets to enable these rural poor overcome distress sale that owes to uneconomic scale of operation.