The Impacts of the Food, Fuel and Financial Crises on Households in Nigeria: A Retrospective Approach for Research Enquiry

Abstract

This paper examines the impacts of the financial, food and fuel crises on the livelihoods of low-income households Nigeria. It uses primary household level data from Nigeria to analyse the impacts of induced price variability on household welfare. Our results indicate that aggregate shocks have significant adverse effects on household consumption, human capital, and labour decisions with a degree of impact variability between northern and southern regions of the country. We find that the coping strategies adopted by the poor to deal with the short-term effects of the crises, and which include substitution for lower quality food, increasing the intensity of work, withdrawing children from school -especially girls -and engaging children in child labour, can lock households in a low-income equilibrium or poverty trap. Provided that covariate shocks exacerbate these effects, tackling the effects of covariate risks becomes central for present and future development policy.

Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Retrospect

“…To achieve this objective, we hinged on the analytical approach of Chiripanhura and Nino-Zarazua (2013), which is the latest empirical study, based on our knowledge, on household welfare in Nigeria. The authors developed an empirical model that takes a logistic nature, where the outcome variable is welfare, which is expected to be explained by the individuals' characteristics (age of the respondent and whether the respondent is the household head) and household characteristics such as the dependency ratio of the household.…”

Perceived Effects of Food Price Inflation on Rural Households’ Food Security Situation in Enugu State, Nigeria

“…High food prices in global market mean the same in the domestic markets [9]. An analysis of the National Bureau of Statistics trend in domestic food and non-food prices in Nigeria between 2003 and 2011 by Chiripanhura and Nino-Zarazua [10] revealed that the food prices in Nigeria had experienced a steady long-term upward trend, characterized by short-term variability with pronounced peaks and troughs between mid-2000s and early 2008, which corresponded to the rise and fall of international food staples. Furthermore, Egwuma et al [11] highlighted the fact that there has been an upsurge in food prices at double digits in recent years, with a peak value of 20.32% recorded in September, 2017.…”