Determinants of rural wome's livelihood in Ibarapa North Local Government Area of Oyo State, Nigeria

Abstract

This study assessed the determinants of the sources of livelihood for rural women in Ibarapa North Local Government Area. 102 respondents were randomly selected using the multistage sampling technique while data was collected using structured questionnaires. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used for data analysis. The result of the descriptive analysis shows that most (80.4%) of the respondents had formal education, majority of the respondents were farmers with access to some agricultural inputs and farm implements. It was also revealed that most of the respondents that were farmers encountered problems such as inadequate credit facilities, lack of extension service, lack of storage facilities and poor marketing information. The result of cross tabulation shows that years of education, marital status and husband's occupation had an influence on the choice of occupation of the respondents. The multinomial logistic regression analysis results also showed that some of the fitted explanatory variables explained the dependent variable. Out of the five explanatory variables hypothesized to influence choice of livelihood strategies, three (education, marital status and husband occupation) were found to be statistically significant (p<0.01). It is therefore recommended that policies that will improve the livelihood por tfolios of women in the study area should be put in place.