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How does wage employment differ from self-employment in Nigeria? The purpose of this paper is to explore the determinants of participation and the resulting wage differentials with respect to individual employees in self-employment, public-wage employment and private-wage employment in the Nigerian labour market.

Using the most recent cross-sectional data from the general household survey (GHS) panel for 2012/2013 wave (Nigeria National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), 2012), this paper applies the multinomial logit estimation for the sectoral choice and selectivity-corrected wage equation where appropriate.

Consistent with other studies in Africa, the findings confirm that the Nigerian labour market is heterogeneous. Factors affecting sectoral choices differ greatly across the analysed sectors. Education, age and geopolitical zones are observed to be the major determinants of sectoral participation. On the basis of BFG estimates, the authors find evidence of downward bias only in the public sector wages that is due to the (Bourguignon, Fournier & Gurgand) allocation of individuals with better unobservable characteristics out of the public employment into the self-employment. Consequently, the human capital variables become no longer significant in the public wage equation after correcting for selectivity bias. However, education and gender are found to be significant determinants of wages in the private and self-employment sectors. The magnitude of the gender coefficient is more negative in self-employment, which may imply a possible gender wage gap in that sector. While the North-East, North-West and South-South zones are highly statistically significantly different from zero in the public sector, only the South-South and South-West zones appear to be significant in self-employment. Hence, such zonal variables are a reflection of differences in economic incentives in Nigeria.

Given the unregulated and precarious nature of employment in self-employment, adequate policies that address gender bias orientations are suggested.

This paper is one of the first that addresses sectoral choices and wage differentials among public, private and self-employment using the most recent GHS data for Nigeria.

Are the urban and rural male-headed households (MHHs) or female-headed households (FHHs) poorer and food (in)secured? Such question is of very important policy concern in the drive towards achieving the first two of the Sustainable Development Goals.

This paper uses 2010–2012 waves of General Household Survey cross-sectional panel data to investigate food (in)security and poverty dynamics amongst MHHs and FHHs in Nigeria, with particular attention to rural and urban dimensions.

Applying the tobit and probit regressions while controlling for poverty and other household characteristics, we observed that female-headed families are more vulnerable to higher incidences of food insecurity than male-headed ones and with an overall significant urban food security advantage compared to rural areas. Comparing urban and rural results in terms of land access rights, urban food insecurity manifests more amongst urban FHHs non–Agri-land owners which however falls as food expenditure rises. However, the rise in per capita food consumption, agricultural characteristics and years of schooling reduces the likelihood of food insecurity for all households.

This study, therefore, offers relevant policy inputs towards addressing poverty and food insecurity in a typical developing country such as Nigeria.