Abstract
The Nigerian economy over the past few years grew at one of the highest rates in Africa. Yet, this growth has not led to substantial reduction in inequality and poverty, particularly in the rural sector. This was partly attributed to redistributional problem of national wealth which has not been adequately investigated. Therefore, the study assessed the contribution of growth and wealth distribution to poverty reduction in rural Nigeria from 1996 to 2004. Data from the National Consumer Survey (NCS) of 1996 and National Living Standard Survey (NLSS) of 2004 sourced from the National Bureau of Statistics were used. The number of households sampled under the NCS and NLSS were 11,577 and 22,200 respectively. The rural household components of NCS and NLSS totaling 9377 and 14,515 respectively were used. Variables extracted for the study included demographic and socioeconomic characteristics as well as average household expenditure. The data were analysed using Gini, Foster-Greer-Thorbecke measures of poverty, the Shapley decomposition rule in co-operative game theory and Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition technique at p = 0.05.
