Abstract

This study examined poverty and welfare status of urban farming households in Kaduna state. Multistage sampling procedure was used to collect data from 272 randomly selected urban households using structured questionnaire. The data was analyzed using descriptive statistics, Foster, Greer and Thorbecke poverty (FGT) index, Gini Coefficients and Tobit regression model. The results show a total per capita expenditure per year of N56, 993,133.76 and a mean per capital expenditure N209533.58 per year. The poverty incidence (P₀), Poverty Gap (P₁) and Severity of Poverty (P₂) obtained for the area was 0.7348, 0.3667 and 0.2218 respectively. Also, an inequality index of 0.5397 recorded shows there is a wide divergence in spending among the urban households. Growth elasticities, and changes in inequality revealed that the poverty measures are more sensitive to inequality than to changes in mean income. Furthermore, poverty decomposition revealed that households with farming as primary occupation were poorer with an index of 0.8080 compared to 0.6995 incidence among those with other jobs. Age, household size, association membership, farming experience, income, expenditure on food and non-food items significantly determined poverty status.  Pro-poor policies targeted at income redistribution in the state was recommended as this will have great impact on poverty. There is also the need to encourage more education among the faming families as welfare statuses of educated families were better off.

Key Words: Urban poverty, Per capita, Welfare, Inequality index, Tobit regression