Financial Decision and Poverty: Examining the Financial Behavior of the Extreme Poor in Nigeria
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The study examines the relationship between poverty and finance so as to ascertain if poverty has an
impact on the quality of financial decision taken by the poor and financially vulnerable individuals.
The study utilised a unique methodology (truncated regression) and applied a survey data to
investigate the quality of loan usage among the extreme poor in Nigeria. We allowed for the
inclusion of other policy relevant variables that may likely inform the direction of new generation
poverty alleviation policies like gender, education and age of the individuals. We find that the
extreme poor use more of the loans for other non-developmental issues like funeral and marriage
celebrations than for productive and poverty alleviating ventures. However, the younger males
engage more in this act than the females. Also, as the poor become more educated, they are able to
use more of the loan for development-oriented investments like purchase of assets, building houses
and even furthering their education. A major policy implication of this result is that loans should be
directed towards younger individuals, and education should be a focal priority in selecting who to
fund.
Keywords
HF5601 Accounting, HG Finance