AN ANALYSIS OF THE INCIDENCE OF WELFARE INEQUALITY AMONG HOUSEHOLDS IN NIGERIA

This paper investigates the incidence of welfare inequality in Nigeria. It utilizes the General House Holds Survey Panel dataset 2018/2019 conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in collaboration with Federal ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and World Bank with sample of 5000 households across the country. Four inequality indices namely: Atkinson‘s inequality measure, Gini Coefficient, Donaldson-Waymark’s and Lorenz curve were used to measure the incidence of welfare inequality among six geo-political zones, Gender (Male/Female headed household); Occupation (Farming/Non-farming household) and Sector (Urban/Rural) of household residence. The results indicate that, North-East has the highest degree of inequality, closely followed by South-South, while North-Central has the lowest degree of inequality in Nigeria. On gender of household head, male headed households have high degree of inequality than female headed households; however, non-farming households recorded high degree of inequality than farming households and finally rural households have the highest degree of inequality than their urban counterpart. By and large the incidence of welfare inequality in Nigeria is apparent, the magnitude depends on the geo-political zone, Gender, occupation or sector of household residents. It is therefore, recommended that, government at all level should create an enabling environment for sustainable wealth creation that would lessens the level of poverty and drastically reduce the quantum of welfare inequality gap among different zones and sub-groups in Nigeria.