| Abstract: |
Rural households in Nigeria have been characterized as poor, and with little
opportunity for development. Many studies have equated poverty with well
being, however empirical literature on well being is less researched. This
paper attempts bridge the knowledge gap in the empirical literature of well
being studies and specifically the use of the capability approach in its
application in the Nigerian well being context which is not as well researched
as poverty studies. The study made use of the Nigerian Core welfare indices
survey questionnaires of 2006 to provide data relevant to capability well
being dimensions. The dimensions include housing, health, nutrition,
education, asset ownership/economic, information flow and security. The first
part of the study involve developing indices of well being using the fuzzy set
in order to generate a composite well being index by the elementary indicators
of the well being dimensions. The second part of the study used a logistic
regression to explore the variability in achieving the composite well being
index value by a set of Conversion factors. The fuzzy set result revealed that
the capability to attain a desired state of well being is highest with respect
to asset ownership and lowest with respect to security. The logistic analysis
shows that the predicted probability of attaining the mean capability well
being level increases for male headed rural households, increasing educational
level and age of the head, increasing household size, employment in the public
sector and residence in any other geopolitical zone except the Northwestern
zone. |