Determinants of Households' Income Poverty in the South-South Geopolitical Zone of Nigeria

Abstract: This paper analyzed income poverty in the south-south geopolitical zone of Nigeria using the FGT model and a logit regression on the 2009-10 National Living Standard Survey data. Zonal level results showed 0.4924, 0.203 and 0.113 poverty incidence, gap and severity respectively. Poverty incidence in Delta and Edo States were fairly higher than the zonal average while those of the other states were marginally less than the zonal average.  While rural share of poverty was 82%, urban share was a meager 18%. Contrary to a widely held view this study showed that male contributed more (91.56%) to poverty than female (8.44%) in the zone. The agricultural sector had a share of 74.75%. This study recommended that poverty reduction efforts should aim at providing rural households equal opportunity to achieve their potentials not minding the state of residence.