Nexus Between Poverty And Livelihood Diversification Among Rural Households In Nigeria A Multidimensional Poverty Index Approach

Rural households are facing high incidence of poverty which have adversely affected their standard of living in other to overcome this challenge people tends to diversify their livelihood source to improve their purchasing power for basic necessities this study was carried out to analyse the effect of livelihood diversification on the poverty status of rural households in Oyo west Local Government Area Oyo state Nigeria data for this study were obtained through the use of structured questionnaire from 120 diversified farmers using two stages sampling techniques data were analysed using descriptive Simpson index of diversificationSID multidimensional poverty indexMPI and Tobit regression model the result of SID showed that there was average level of livelihood diversification in the study area the result of MPI revealed that the multidimensional headcount ratio was 31 the incidence of poverty was 50 and the MPI was 0.16 implying that the rural households were deprived in 16 of the total deprivation it could experience overall the result of Tobit regression revealed that gender p0.01 level of diversification p0.05 and membership of cooperative society p0.1 negatively affect MPI while years of formal education p0.1 positively affects MPI this study recommended that awareness and skills acquisition programmes should be targeted towards women and youths as this will be instrumental in alleviation of poverty rural household heads were also encouraged to form cooperative societies in other to have access to credit facilities to purchase basic necessities of life this would go a long way in reducing their poverty level.