These numbers explain latest face of poverty in Nigeria

After a decade, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has surveyed 22,110 households to measure national poverty and to help you understand it, we break down the report (published Monday) in numbers.

N137,430

This is the least amount you need to spend on consumption per year to be classified as non-poor. On a daily basis, this would be N376.5 or roughly $1 based on the new official exchange rate of 360/$.

40.1%

Four in ten Nigerians or over 82.9 million Nigerians live in poverty as at last year, this is lower than a 62.6% poverty rate reported by the NBS in 2010.

If you are in a rural community, there is a 52.1% chance you are poor but if you are in an urban community then that likelihood is 18%.

N17,728.47

The exact amount the 40.1% of Nigerians considered poor, on a national level, need per year to escape poverty. This is based on a poverty depth or gap of 12.9.

Poverty gap is steeper in the rural population at 17.4 (N23,912.82) compared to 4.5 (N6,184.35) in urban ones.

8.5%

This is what is it took Osun to be the state with the least poverty rate. Only around 9 in 100 people in the state are poor.

Sokoto (87.73%), Taraba (87.72%), and Jigawa (87.02%) had the highest poverty rate, while Lagos (4.5%), Delta (6%) and Osun (8.5%) had the least.

35.1

The distribution of wealth/expenditure is fairly equal in Nigeria, where Gini Co-efficient is 35.1 (100 means perfect inequality of expenditure distribution while 0 means perfect equality).

In the rural population, it is 32.8 while in Urban population measure of inequality is 31.9.

66.17%

Nation-wide, households headed by male with No Education or Less than Primary Education had a poverty rate of 66.17%. The probability of poverty falls as education rises. Male household heads with post-secondary education had a poverty rate of 18.13%.

Male household heads in urban area had significantly lower poverty rate across levels of education than their rural counterparts.

34.72%

Households with female heads outperformed those with male head across educational levels and area of settlement.

Across the country, households headed by a female with No Education or Less than Primary Education had a poverty rate of 34.72% which progressively fell as education level rose, so that those led by a female with post-secondary education had 5.66% nation-wide poverty rate, outperforming the best scenario for male heads who have post-secondary education and live in urban areas.

Female-heads with tertiary education in urban areas had 3.42% poverty rate while counterparts in rural areas without formal or less than primary education had 39.17% poverty rate.

58.76 vs 37.75

That is the poverty rate for household head involved in agriculture only by sex (male and female respectively.)

Poverty headcount by income-generating activities was least for both male and female in wage work only at 17.53% to 13.99% per gender.

1 That’s the household size with the least poverty rate in Nigeria (2.66%).

Household size of 2-4 people have a rate of 17.88%, 5-9 people (40.9%), 10-19 people (67.27%), 20 or more (77.66%).

Urban households, however, have a lower rate than rural ones across all family sizes.

N81,767

You need to spend roughly N82,000 a year or N225 per day on food to meet the minimum nutritional requirement of 2251 calories to escape food poverty.

The top 20% spend an average of N415,254 on consumption per year, 6 times the bottom 20% spend (N65,690).

This measure of nominal expenditure (i.e not adjusted for inflation) means the top 20% spend aroudnd N1,137.7 per day or $3 (360/$) while the bottom spend roughly N180 or 50 cents ($0.5).