INTERACTIONS AMONG POVERTY, ACCESS TO MODERN ENERGY SOURCES AND GENDER IN NIGERIA BY FIDELIS O. OGWUMIKE AND UCHE M. OZUGHALU

INTRODUCTION A major socio-economic problem plaguing Nigeria is poverty. It is regrettable to note that despite the abundance of material and human resources in the country, the country has over the years been wallowing in severe poverty. A recent national survey shows that nearly 70% of Nigerians is entrapped in poverty(NBS, 2012).

Associated with the poverty problem in Nigeria is the gross inadequacy in access to modern energy sources. Most Nigerian households use inferior/environmentally harmful sources of energy for cooking and lighting.

Both poverty and access to modern energy sources have gender dimension. Women are said to be more vulnerable to poverty than men. Women apparently are plagued more than men with the burden of lack of access to modern energy sources.

2. CONCEPTUAL AND METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES Conceptual and Methodological Issues on Poverty -Absolute Poverty -Relative Poverty -Material Poverty -Subjective Poverty -Chronic Poverty -Transient Poverty

Designing a Poverty Line -Direct Calorie Intake(DCI) Method -Food-Energy-Intake(FEI) Method -Cost-of-Basic Needs(CBN) Method -Arbitrary-Choice-of Index(ACI) Method

Axioms for a Desirable Poverty Measure -Monotonicity Axiom -Transfer Axiom -Focus Axiom

Popular Measures of Poverty -Headcount Ratio -Poverty Gap Index -Sen Index -Foster-Greer-Thorbecke(FGT) Index

Conceptual and Methodological Issues on Energy Consumption and Access to Energy Sources -Energy consumption refers to the use of energy for various purposes such as cooking, lighting and powering machines. - Access to energy sources refers to the availability and affordability of the sources.

Conceptual and Methodological Issues on Gender - Gender is said to be a socio-economic variable used to analyse roles, responsibilities, constraints and opportunities of people in development efforts. It considers both males and females. Gender issues refer to various aspects of the relationship between men and women that involve roles assigned with direct or indirect, positive or negative, impact on development goals

3. THEORETICAL ISSUES AND EMPIRICAL LITERATURE Theory of Transition Poverty and lack of access to modern energy sources are said to have more of female face than male face. Women bear greater burden of poverty than men. And the incidence of lack access to modern energy sources is apparently higher among women than among men.

Many empirical studies on poverty, access to energy sources and related issues have been done in recent times. These include Ramani & Haijndermans (2003); Martins (2005); Barnes, Khandker & Samad(2010);Ogwumike & Ozughalu(2012a & 2012b); and Oyekale(2012). In general, these studies use descriptive statistics and/or econometrics.

Some empirical evidences show, among other things, that poverty is a major barrier to access to modern energy sources, and poverty and lack of access to modern energy sources are more pronounced among women than among men.

4. METHODOLOGY This study employs both descriptive statistics and econometrics in analysing the interactions among poverty, access to modern energy sources and gender. The poverty measure adopted is the Headcount Ratio. Access to modern energy sources is captured by taking the use of modern energy sources for cooking and modern energy sources for lighting by households.

The variable used to capture gender is gender of household head. Poverty is defined as when a household’s per capita expenditure is less than two-thirds of mean per capita household expenditure in regionally deflated prices.

5. Empirical Analysis of Interactions among Poverty, Access to Modern Energy Sources and Gender in Nigeria Poor: 69%; Non-poor: 31% Those with Access to Modern Energy Sources: 17.7% Those Without Access to Modern Energy Sources: 82.3% Male-headed Households: 89.8% Female-headed Households: 10.2%

DescriptionPoverty Status PoorNon-poor Percentage of the Population that have Access to Modern Energy Sources 10.1%7.6% Percentage of the Population that do not have Access to Modern Energy Sources 58.9%23.4% Incidence of Lack of Access to Modern Energy Sources85.4%75.4% Table 1: Interaction between Poverty and Access to Modern Energy Sources

DescriptionGender of Household Head MaleFemale Percentage of the Population that have Access to Modern Energy Sources 15.5%2.2% Percentage of the Population that do not have Access to Modern Energy Sources 74.3%8.0% Incidence of Lack of Access to Modern Energy Sources 82.8%78.3% Table 2: Interaction between Access to Modern Energy Sources and Gender of Household Head

DescriptionGender of Household Head MaleFemale Percentage of the Population that are Poor62.8%6.3% Percentage of the Population that are Non-poor27.0%4.0% Incidence of Poverty69.9%61.1% Table 3: Interaction between Poverty and Gender of Household Head

Tables 1, 2 and 3 show the following: -The incidence of lack of access to modern energy sources is higher among the poor than among the non-poor. -The incidence of lack of access to modern energy sources is higher among male-headed households than among female-headed households.

The incidence of poverty is higher among male-headed households than among female- headed households.

VariableBSESigExp(B) HS0.124* AHH-0.009* GHH-0.226* AME-0.257* SEC0.401* ELHH-0.048* LPFEXP-1.194* Constant12.578* Cox & Snell R 2 =0.225; Nagelkerke R 2 =0.318; Likelihood Ratio Statistic=4.137E7 P value of Likelihood Ratio Statistic (which follows the distribution with 7 d.f )=0.000 Table 4: Estimates of Equation 4 showing Interactions among Poverty, Access to Modern Energy Sources and Gender in Nigeria.

As shown in Table 4, access to modern energy sources in inversely related to poverty. The Exp (B) of indicates that households that have access to modern energy sources are less likely to be in poverty compared to households that do not have access to modern energy sources.

Gender of household head with respect of female headship is inversely related to poverty. The Exp (B) of indicates that households that are headed by females are less likely to be in poverty compared to households that are headed by males.

The table also shows that household size and residing in rural sector increase the odds in favour of being in poverty. The table further indicates that educational level of house head, age of household head and per capita food expenditure reduce the odds in favour of being in poverty.

VariableBSESigExp(B) HS-0.145* AHH0.000* GHH0.083* POVERTY-0.073* SEC-2.525* ELHH0.104* Constant-0.568* Cox & Snell R 2 =0.258; Nagelkerke R 2 =0.424; Likelihood Ratio Statistic=4.822E7 P value of Likelihood Ratio Statistic (which follows the distribution with 7 d.f )=0.000 Table 5: Estimates of Equation 5 showing Interactions among Poverty, Access to Modern Energy Sources and Gender in Nigeria.

As indicated in Table 5, poverty is inversely related to access to modern energy sources.And gender of household head with respect to female headship is directly related to access to modern energy sources. The Exp (B) of associated with the poverty parameter estimate shows that, compared to households that are not poor, households that are poor are less likely to have access to modern energy sources.

Also, the Exp (B) of associated with the parameter estimate for female headship indicates that households that have female heads are more likely to have access to modern energy sources compared to households that have male heads.

The table further shows that household size and residing in rural sector reduce the odds in favour of having access to modern energy sources. But educational level of household head is positively related to access to modern energy sources; it increases the odds in favour of having access to modern energy sources. Also, age of household head is positively related to access to modern energy sources.

6. Conclusion This study has shown and analysed the interactions among poverty, access to modern energy sources and gender in Nigeria. Both poverty and lack of access to modern energy sources are highly pronounced in Nigeria and they vary across gender of household heads.

Poverty and lack of access to modern energy sources are inversely related. Female headship of households reduces the odds in favour of being in poverty and increases the odds in favour of having access to modern energy sources. Major factors that affect poverty and access to modern energy sources include household size, educational level of household head and sector of residence.

The Nigeria government should take urgent steps to adequately reduce poverty and increase access to modern energy sources among households in the country. In doing this, efforts should be made to ensure that households have small sizes and that household heads have sound and high level of education.

Also, more attention should be focused on the rural sector with regard to reducing the incidence of poverty and increasing access to modern energy sources since both poverty and lack of access to modern energy sources are apparently more pronounced in the rural sector than in the urban sector.

Nigeria aims at becoming one of the twenty leading economies in the world by 2020AD. There is no way this can materialise when most of the country’s households are in poverty trap and lack access to modern energy sources.

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