A Functioning Approach to Well Being Analysis in Rural Nigeria

The Nigerian rural population is described by low productivity, little formal education and poverty. The need for more studies on the issue of wellbeing of rural population is hinged on the continued development of approaches that give better understanding of the phenomenon. This paper attempted to use Amartya Sen’s capability approach to assess multidimensional well being in rural Nigeria in six functioning dimensions obtained from the Nigerian Core Welfare Indices Survey using the fuzzy set theory. A binary logistic regression was also carried out to isolate the factors that determine the attainment of a pre determined level of well being after computation with the fuzzy set analysis. The results showed that rural Nigeria is an agrarian society; the functioning with the highest level of achievement out of the six dimensions studied was Housing, while asset ownership/income was the least achieved dimension in rural Nigeria. Results further revealed that belonging to female headed households, increasing age and being employed in the private (formal) sector as well as having some form of post secondary education enhances well being while being employed within the agricultural sector significantly reduced the well being of rural households in Nigeria.