The Impact of Poverty Alleviation Programmes on Economic Growth in Nigeria 1981 - 2013
Baghebo, Michael PhD.; Emmanuel, Nathan PhD

Introduction
This study is aimed at investigating the impact of poverty alleviation programmes on economic growth in Nigeria. Using data covering the period 1981 to 2013. Based on empirical study, it is observed that poverty is multidimensional and its persistence is due to lack of productive resources. The paper notes that successive regimes in Nigeria have been introducing different programmes to alleviate poverty.The Nigerian case reveal that the major constraint to improving the standard of living of the poor is capital (finance). This has restricted their extensive participation in economic activities which could improve their lives. This study therefore adopts the Bounds Testing (Autoregressive Distributed Lag, ARDL) approach to long-run analysis, the result shows that in the short-run PRCEA and PRCESCS contributed positively to changes in RGDP but FD showed negative sign. This means that government expenditure on economic services and per capita expenditure on other social and community services contribute positively in alleviating poverty in Nigeria. While Fiscal Deficit which represents the level of good governance impacts negatively on economic growth, this implies that (FD) does not contribute to alleviating poverty in the short run but does at the long run. However, this paper maintained that continuous improvement and re-structuring of programmes targeted at alleviating poverty through increase in capital expenditure on economic, social and community services and qualitative governance would alleviate poverty in Nigeria.

Full Text: PDF