Livelihood diversification of rural households in Niger State, Nigeria.

Abstract

This study examined livelihood diversification of rural households in Niger State, Nigeria. It identified reasons for engaging in livelihood diversification and determined factors influencing livelihood diversification in the study area. Multi-stage sampling technique was used to select 180 rural households that were interviewed with structured questionnaire to obtain primary data. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze data collected. Findings from study revealed that majority 79.6% of the respondents’ age range between 21-50 years with mean age of 44 years; about 77.2% were male, while 74.2% of the respondents had formal education. The mean household size, farming experience and farm size was 9 people, 29 years and 2 hectares respectively. In addition, majority (70.6%) of the respondents revealed that reason for livelihood diversification was to earn more incomes, while only 1.1 indicated risk aversion as reason for diversifying. Tobit regression analysis revealed pseudo R2 of 0.7284 implying that about 72.8% variation in livelihood diversification was caused by the explanatory variables. However, education (2.31), seasonality (4.36) and mineral resources (2.50) were significant at 5% and 1% level of probability, and had direct relationship with livelihood diversification. The null hypothesis on the selected socioeconomic characteristics was accepted except for education which had significant relationship with livelihood diversification. Thus, most of the respondents were involved in livelihood diversification to earn more income and escape poverty. It was therefore recommended that rural household should properly sensitized through extension agents to diversify their source of income. Also credit should be made accessible to them for diversification into non-farm business activities