Rice Marketing as a Means of Poverty Alleviation in Niger State, Nigeria

This study examined rice marketing as a means of poverty alleviation in Niger State, North Central Nigeria. Ninety-eight representative rice marketers’ households were used for the study. Descriptive statistics, Foster, Greer and Thorbecke poverty measures as well as logistic regression model were used as the analytical tools for the study. The result of the descriptive statistics shows that forty-nine percent of the rice marketers have no western education and majority of the rice marketers’ households used open spaces for defecation. The result of the poverty profile shows that all the representative households were poor using 1.25 dollar a day poverty benchmark and only 32 percent were poor using the estimated relative poverty benchmark of N 1,894.2 per capita. The result of the logistic regression model shows the following factors influenced the poverty status of the rice marketers’ households in the study area. These are age and gender of the rice marketers, household size, other sources of income, marital status of the rice marketers and their educational status. The study recommends manageable household size as well as improved level of education for members of the rice marketers’ households for poverty reduction in the study area.