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# **6.1. Analytic Methodology**

Several lessons can be learnt from the methodology in this paper. First the results have demonstrated that there is a difference between the poor and the extreme poor. It has also been established that while the headcount declined for the poor and extreme poor, depth and severity actually increased for the extreme poor. This would have been entirely missed if the analysis had used only one poverty line. Second, it is important to check how robust the results are, to changes in the poverty lines and poverty measures. Sensitivity analysis showed that all major patterns remained unchanged with small changes in the poverty lines. Dominance analysis permitted us to broaden that conclusion, and did indicate that caution was needed because for values up to almost half of the present poverty line, the conclusions would be reversed, in the sense that, it would find an increase in poverty over the seven year period. Third, the decomposition analysis of the over-time changes in poverty into growth and redistribution, and further into intra-sectoral and population shifts, was particularly useful to understand the dynamics of poverty and its implications for a continuously changing scene.

The analysis of targeting indicators is very useful to identify vulnerable groups. This is particularly useful to policy makers who always ask the question, who are the vulnerable groups and who should be targeted. Lastly, our use of a multi-dimensional approach in combination with decomposable poverty indices proved to be a very effective tool in linking economic change to welfare of households and individuals within the household. We do not claim in any way to have proved causality, as perhaps we could have done with a comprehensive economy-wide model, but what we do claim is that this collaborative effort has broken ground in the field of poverty in Nigeria. However, a lot of research still needs to be done to explain many of the findings in this paper.

# 6.2. **Beyond the Poverty Profile**

Considering the severe constraints imposed on the poverty profile by the difficulties in accessing and cleaning the Nigerian data sets, it is important that consideration be given to follow-up strategies to improve in-country capacity for data collection and analysis and establishing poverty monitoring systems. A systematic study is needed to fully assess useroriented data needs for Nigeria. This paper recommends the establishment of an annual monitoring report on poverty and welfare in Nigeria. Year-to-year changes in Nigeria were very drastic as we saw, and there is no reason to think that these changes will not occur again. The paper also recommends that both household expenditure and basic needs information is needed, since neither is by itself sufficient to give a full picture of welfare. We recommend that once in every five years an integrated living standards survey be carried out to permit in-depth analysis of household behavior and response.

Apart from that, there should be other quicker monitoring surveys, or even some sort of priority surveys, focusing only on selected basic needs variables of the sort indicated before - for example, for the rural areas, the mix of crops they farm, the quality of their land, the value of their assets such as livestock, or even the degree to which they rely on wage labor compared to better off farmers. There is no information on the asset base, typical of the poor and the sort of