Abstract
Rural poverty has been the bane of many developing countries including Nigeria and rural women dwellers are often among the vulnerable groups to its consequences. The study determined poverty coping strategies of rural women dwellers of Batagarawa Local Government Area (LGA) of Katsina State, Nigeria. Simple random sampling technique was used to sample 10 rural women from each of the 6 selected villages to give a sample size of 60 women that was used for the study. A structured interview schedule containing questions on respondents’ socio-economic characteristics, coping strategies and constraints was used to collect data. Descriptive statistics such as frequency counts, percentages, and means were used to describe the data while Chi square and PPMC were used to determine the relationship between the independent variables and dependent variable. Women in the area were mostly married (80%), Muslims (88.3%), members of women group (66.7%) with mean age of (28.8 ±8.39), farm size (2.9±1.52), experience (12.8 ±6.76) and had Quranic education (80%). Processing of farm produce ( = 2.23), sale of farm produce ( x = 1.87) ranked 1st and 2nd among non-agricultural coping strategies while rabbitary (x= 2.13) and poultry production ( x = 2.03) were ranked 1st and 2nd agricultural based coping strategies. Also levels of use of both non-agricultural (53.3%) and agricultural (53.3%) coping strategies were high. Lack of access to credit ( x = 1.67) and finance ( x = 1.60) ranked 1st and 2nd among constraints faced by women in the use of the coping strategies. Significant relationship existed among educational status (χ2=8.856), and membership to women group (χ2=6.563) and respondents’ use of non- agricultural coping strategies while women group (χ2=8.929) was significantly related with respondents’ uptake of agricultural based coping strategies. Also farm size (r=-0.276), experience (r=0.381), and constraints (r=-0.394) significantly correlated with respondents’ level of use of both non-agricultural and agricultural coping strategies. Level of poverty coping strategies of the respondents was high. A policy framework by the government targeted at reducing or obliterating the bureaucratic principles that create barriers to rural women’s access to bank credit or any other sources is germane. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n6s4p296
Highlights
That poverty is a reality and spreading like wild fire in recent times especially in developing countries is no more in doubt
A total score was determined and respondents who scored below the mean value had low constraints, while those whose score equal or greater that the mean score had high level of constraints to poverty coping strategies. Descriptive statistics such as frequency counts, percentages, and means were used to describe the data while Chi square and PPMC were used to determine the relationship between the independent variables and dependent variable
The result further showed that 88.3% were Muslims while 11.7% were Christians. This finding may account to a greater extent in the determination of the activities the respondents can engage themselves to cope with poverty
Summary
That poverty is a reality and spreading like wild fire in recent times especially in developing countries is no more in doubt. Not in contention is the worldwide outrage on poverty as many people the world over are reportedly living in absolute poverty and suffer from chronic hunger (Simpa 2014). The rural areas seem to be the worst hit going by the report of Simpa (2014) that about 3.1 billion people (55%) in rural areas are poor with about 1.4 billion living in less than US $1.25. The same source observed that ill health, illiteracy and degraded environment are forces that the poor battle on regular basis. Sen (1989) along this line had considered poverty as the absence of some basic capabilities to function and the denial of opportunities
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