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This paper evaluates the impact of socio and demographic factors on the multidimensional poverty of smallholder arable crop farming households in Nigeria.

Data were drawn from the second wave of the LSMS-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture General Household Survey Panel 2012/2013. The methods adopted in analysing the data were descriptive statistics, Alkire and Foster Method (AFM) and logit regression model.

The result shows that 84.34% of the households were headed by a male while 80.26% of the respondents were married with a mean household size of seven persons. The multidimensional poverty of arable crop farm households in Nigeria is 0.60, while the adjusted headcount ratio (MPI) is 0.27, with an average intensity of 0.45. We found that deprivation in the dimension of living standard accounted for 45.5% of the overall multidimensional poverty index (MPI). The result of the logistic regression indicates that household location, gender, household size and non-farm income are negatively correlated to poverty. The factors that increase poverty among households are the age of the household head and access to extension services.

The study presents an alternative means of assessing poverty among smallholder arable crop farming households in Nigeria. This study recommends that policymakers should focus more on improving the living standard of arable crop farming households to reduce poverty in rural areas. Similarly, concerted efforts should be made towards providing adequate health care and improved sanitation, supply of electricity and educational training that goes beyond primary education for farming household members.

The majority of poor women in Africa live in rural areas, and investigating their empowerment status and factors influencing their empowerment is therefore a tool for overcoming poverty. This paper investigated the dimensions and determinants of women's empowerment in rural Nigeria.

This study used data from the 2013 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS). Information on women's agencies, resource, income, leadership and time/workload was used to construct women empowerment index (WEI). Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and logit regression model.

Most of the decisions were made by the women's spouses, while decisions on how to spend her earnings were jointly made with her spouse. A majority of the women did not justify beating nor owned businesses. A larger percentage of rural women were disempowered than men; agency had the highest relative contribution to women's disempowerment; and women in the northern zones of Nigeria were less empowered than their southern counterparts. Husband's education and her age were inversely related to women's empowerments while her education, household size and being the household head were directly related to it.

There is a dearth of empirical studies on multidimensional women's empowerment in rural Nigeria. This study therefore provides a clear understanding of drivers of women's empowerment in rural Nigeria, and its findings are to serve as guiding documents for policymakers in designing gender-responsive interventions programs and implementation of a genuine gender mainstreaming in rural development policy in Nigeria. Further, the findings would contribute to the growing body of knowledge, especially empirical studies, on women's empowerment in Nigeria and the developing world.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-07-2019-0455

The importance of gender equality is reflected not only in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), but also in the World Bank’s Gender Action Plan launched in 2007 as well as in other treaties and actions undertaken at regional and international levels. Unlike other gender poverty works, which are mostly based on monetary measurement, the purpose of this paper is to adopt a non-monetary approach.

The present study makes use of a counting approach to examine gender issues in Burkina Faso and Togo using household surveys, namely Enquête Intégrale surles Conditions de Vie des Ménages (2009/2010) and Core Welfare Indicators Questionnaire (2011), respectively. It focusses on six dimensions (housing, basic utilities, assets, education, employment and access to credit) largely recognized as MDG targets.

Main findings indicate that overall individuals are the most deprived in education in Burkina Faso, while the reverse situation is true in Togo. Gender inequality is observed in all dimensions since women always seem to be more deprived than men. The situation is also marked by regional disparities. Moreover, the assessment of dimensional contributions shows different patterns for each country. While employment proves to be the main contributor of gender inequality in Burkina Faso, three dimensions (assets, access to credit and employment) account together for most of the total contribution to gender inequality in Togo.

The main contribution of the paper is to use a multidimensional method (counting approach) to assess gender deprivation, with countries comparison. It also proposes an interesting combination of the decomposition by dimension with the subgroup’s decomposition in order to determine the largest contributor to gender inequality.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the European Framework for Measuring Progress (e-Frame). It is a coordination project funded by the European Commission (EC) which builds on the latest political directions with particular attention to the priorities identified by the Europe 2020 strategy.

e-Frame aims at contributing to empower the European debate on “GDP and beyond”, taking a broad approach by looking together on social, economic, environmental and global dimensions. Main general actions are coordinating initiatives of different actors to foster the debate by involving all relevant stakeholders through different communication channels and networking activities; streamlining the stocktaking on what has been reached so far and organizing dissemination events.

The e-Frame project is largely contributing to the gross domestic product (GDP) and beyond debate. Its main outcomes range from thematic achievements to more strategically and politically oriented documents. Particular attention is devoted to the challenges that are emerging from the stocktaking activities carried out within the project and that have been conceptually divided in those pertaining to the official statistical production and those more related to the possible interactions between official and non-official statistics.

e-Frame original features are proposing new ways for delivering information to a wide audience of experts as well as to the society, at large; in defining guidelines for the use of existing well-being indicators by policy-makers; identifying new topics and emerging needs to be put at the center of future research agendas by the EC and by the European Statistical Systems in the area of measuring well-being, societal progress and sustainability.

Usage of internet and mobile phones has promoted and sometimes hindered various aspects of development bringing radical changes to Kenyan households in the last couple of years. The rapid spread of mobile phones, mobile broadband and internet usage at the household level has increased the potential of these technologies leading to development outcomes. This paper aims to focus on these issues.

The paper is based on primary data collected through two surveys and is part of ongoing PhD work. A rigorous methodology was designed and used to conduct the research. Starting with the research problem that outlined the key areas for the study, research objectives were developed following a background review of the study. The paper establishes the development outcomes associated with the rapid spread and usage of the internet and mobile phones and explores if the wide usage expands or shrinks the capabilities of the households.

The analysis indicates that a high value is attached to the new technologies and in particular mobile phones. It also reveals that the new technologies enabled some capabilities and hindered others leading to diverse development outcomes. Use of internet and mobile phones led to positive and negative development outcomes in low income households in Kenya. Households' choices were based on their perceptions of the role that the new technologies played in enhancing their quality of life. Internet access and usage was limited and restricted to urban areas while mobile phone usage was distributed across the country. However, increased use of mobile internet is expected to change the situation. The paper notes that the social, economic and knowledge status of individuals, coupled with the choices they make, determines the development outcomes derived from use of these technologies.

The paper makes recommendations for further research on the effects of new technologies on quality of life.

The paper examines the extent to which usage of the internet and mobile phones enhances or hinders households' capability to achieve development in social, economic and knowledge dimensions.