IMPACT OF GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURE ON POVERTY ALLEVIATION.
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IMPACT OF GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURE ON POVERTY ALLEVIATION.
Chapter one
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
The role of government expenditure in supporting economic growth and poverty reduction has been hotly contested among academics (Aschauer, 1989; Barro, 1990; Tanzi and Zed, 1997; Fan, Hazell and Thorat, 2000).
Most of these studies treat overall government spending as a single variable or only include one type of spending in their models, potentially masking the underlying economic dynamics through aggregation.
The importance of government spending in the process of human development is that it improves people’s health as well as their education. Traditional measures of health status include life expectancy at birth and child and infant mortality.
Neither of these measures captures the full amount of morbidity. Health variables (nutrition, mobility, morbidity, and height) are favourably connected with education (Sackey, 2005; Cochrane 1986, 1988).
However, even after accounting for the low levels of these variables, “one would have expected a much higher level of human development achievement in Nigeria where oil exports boosted the GOP, human development has continued to decline since 1981″ (Gupta et al, 2003).
The primary goal is to determine whether government spending on health would contribute to Nigeria’s economic growth by 2015.
A basic contradiction in Nigeria is that around two-thirds of the population is poor despite living in a country with enormous potential riches (NEEDS, 2005: xxiii). Poverty remains prevalent in Nigeria and other African countries.
Sudan, notably in the Dafur region, has such severe levels of poverty that millions of women, children, and men live in extreme precarious conditions. In the Central Republic of Congo, young men and women work as slaves in mines for a living.
According to a 1984 World Bank research, more than one in every four persons in Africa suffers from severe hunger and malnutrition today. The report also said that starvation has become the major story in contemporary Africa, [Stryker in Phyllis and Meara 1986:329).
Food output per capita appears to have been declining practically constantly for over three decades, exemplifying Africa’s agricultural productivity dilemma.
Many African governments have attempted to address the issue of food insecurity by importing food. These countries have had to deal with a public financing problem.
A good example is Nigeria, which exploited the oil windfall in the early 1980s to import practically everything it consumed. While this was being done, agricultural production plummeted to dangerous levels.
At the same time, increasing commodity prices made life difficult for the majority of Nigerians, causing a decline in their social and economic fortunes.
Demand for cereals and tubers for livestock feed and biofuel production has recently caused a global food crisis, with particularly dire effects for Africa, where the poor rely mostly on cereals, roots, and tubers for sustenance.
The global food crisis has added a new and essential dimension to food insecurity in Nigeria, with the poor enduring unprecedented hunger and hardship. It is anticipated that Nigeria will not survive a serious food crisis.
Poverty and its relationship to agricultural productivity have emerged as a key feature in all theories of Africa’s food problem. Pinstrup- Anderson, Pandya- Lorch, and Rosegrant attested to this when they asserted that the IFPRI’s forecasts that many millions of people will suffer from hunger and its debilitating consequences can be prevented if;
According to the Food Policy Report International Food Policy Research Institute (199:30), mobilising revolutionary advancements in information technology and biotechnology can aid the poor if political will is harnessed to implement effective poverty-eradication strategies.
The magnitude of food insecurity in Nigeria is clearly linked to the ruling class’s deliberate policy biases. In this study, we will use the political economy approach to conduct a critical examination of governments’ responses to poverty in order to understand the relationship between poverty, low agricultural output, and food security.
Poverty is a complex term. However, poverty measurements have mostly focused on quantitative money-centric measurements utilising income and consumption to determine whether a household can afford a basket of commodities over a certain time period (Baker and Schuler, 2004).
These widely used money-centric measures, however, create a false sense of poverty by ignoring the importance of homegrown food, household size and composition, unsatisfied basic needs, economic vulnerability, household asset ownership, dwelling characteristics, and access to basic services, which can lead to an underestimation of poverty (Baker and Schuler, 2004).
As Baker and Schuler (2004) point out, money-centric measurements fail to capture many other elements of poverty, particularly in metropolitan areas.
Because of the congested living circumstances in cities, there is a substantial risk to the environment and health. As a result, measuring quality of life, which often includes information about living conditions, dwelling characteristics, and access to basic requirements, provides detailed knowledge and understanding of the dynamic aspects of poverty.
Thus, it is critical to assess the quality of life of clients and their homes that are enrolled in a programme targeted at reducing poverty and improving socioeconomic conditions for low-income urban families.
1.2 Statement of Problem
According to available data, Nigeria has one of the highest rates of poverty in the world. According to data on human development and social welfare, Nigeria’s population is becoming one of the poorest in the world, and the country as a whole is extremely vulnerable.
Although successive Nigerian governments have implemented numerous poverty alleviation programmes, the World Bank’s report in 1999 revealed that Nigeria’s Human Development Index (HDI) was only 0.416 and that approximately 70% of the population lived below the poverty line.
Some previous initiatives to alleviate poverty include the founding of the Department of Food, Roads, and Rural Infrastructure (DFFRI), with the primary goals of opening up rural areas and improving the living conditions of the vulnerable poor; however, this project has since been abandoned.
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