Agreeing on a definition of poverty is central to producing valid and reliable measures. Defining poverty, and a normative adequate standard of living, also carries practical significance for targeting assistance and tracking outcomes. Common measures like Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the Gini coefficient are aggregates and cannot differentiate the global poor from the non-poor, nor were they intended to.
This is the second in a two-part series on measuring and understanding economic growth and poverty in Nigeria, presenting findings from EPAR Technical Report #327. Nigeria became Africa’s largest economy in 2014. As Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita grew by nearly 70% between 1992-2009, poverty rates fell by 6%. However, while the proportion of impoverished Nigerians decreased slightly, the population grew by 54.3%, increasing the absolute number of Nigerians below the poverty line.
This is the first in a two-part series on measuring and understanding economic growth and poverty in Nigeria, presenting findings from EPAR Technical Report #327. We begin by examining different measures of economic growth and poverty and how the choice of measures may affect findings.