EFFECTS OF HOUSEHOLD UPLIFTING PROGRAMME ON WELFARE STATUS OF BENEFICIARIES IN NIGERIA Authors

The high incidence of poverty in Nigeria despite several interventions from successive government, points to the fact that past programmes targeted at poverty reduction have been ineffective and this has been attributed to several factors. This consistent failure of past programmes necessitates an evaluation of current attempts to solve the same age-long issue. Therefore, effects of HUP on welfare status of beneficiaries in Oyo state, Nigeria were investigated. A five-stage sampling procedure was used to select 160 respondents (68 beneficiaries, 92 non beneficiaries). Three beneficiary LGAs were randomly selected and 7% each of beneficiaries were randomly selected from the list of beneficiaries in the LGAs. For nonbeneficiaries, two political wards were randomly selected from each of the LGAs and one community was randomly selected from each ward, resulting in 6 communities. In each community, fifteen households were selected and information on socioeconomic characteristics, attitude to HUP, benefits derived from HUP, constraints to utilizing HUP and household welfare status were collected and analysed. Propensity Score Matching (PSM) was done to avoid bias between beneficiaries and nonbeneficiaries. Results reveal that 82.8% of the beneficiaries were female while 17.2% were male. Similarly, more than half (66.7%) of non-beneficiaries were females, while 33.3% were male. The mean age of respondents was 39.3±11.7years. About 89.1% of the beneficiaries were married and 83.3% of non-beneficiaries also married. 60.9% of the beneficiaries never attended school, while 17.2% and 21.9% had primary and secondary education, respectively. Similarly, 55.4% of non-beneficiary had non-formal education, while 20.3% and 21.3% had primary and secondary education, respectively. The average monthly income of both beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries was ₦16,497.30±₦22867.00 and ₦17,038.40±₦9,915.90 respectively. More than half (62.5%) of the beneficiaries had a favourable attitude towards HUP, while 37.5% had unfavourable attitude. Conversely, large percentage (59.3%) of the non-beneficiary had unfavourable attitude towards HUP, while 40.7% had favourable attitude. More than half (54.7%) of the beneficiaries derived high level of benefit from HUP, while 45.3% derived low benefit. Insufficient income from bi-monthly payment ( 0.91), irregular payment of bi-monthly stipend ( 0.88) and absence of feedback links with officials ( 0.31) constituted major constraints to utilizing the benefit of HUP. More than half (65.6%) of the beneficiaries of HUP were nonpoor, while most (51.9%) of nonbeneficiary were poor. Benefits derived from HUP (r= 0.352) and constraints to utilizing HUP (r=-0.144) were significantly related to welfare status of beneficiaries. Beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries significantly differed in their attitude to HUP (t =2.81) and household welfare status (t = 13.3). Monthly income (β=-0.371), educational qualification (β=0.226), family type (β=-0.297) and number of dependent (β=-0.165) all contributed to household welfare. This implies that households with high dependents are more likely to be poor than those with low dependents. This study concludes that HUP is an effective intervention tool for poverty alleviation and improving household welfare.