ISSN 2360-798X
Abstract
Accepted 19th May, 2021.
The study examined farm and non-farm livelihood diversification among youths in Ekiti State, Nigeria where it described the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents; identified various jobs engaged in by young farmers and non-farming youths and examined the determinants of livelihood diversification among rural youths. This study presented a result which relied basically on the data collected from multistage sampling of 90 farming and non-farming youths in the study area using a well structured questionnaire. Data analysis was carried out using descriptive statistics, t-test, chi square and probit regression model. Result of socio-economic characteristics of the respondents revealed that 68.9% of the respondents sampled were male with mean age of 31 years. About 63.3% indicated that they were married while 78.9% of them had tertiary education. The result revealed that 67.8% of them involved in multiple jobs, and the prominent ones among them are; crop production, poultry production, part time teaching, tailoring, food selling, okada (commercial motorcycle) riding and commercial driving. The results of the probit regression model showed that the coefficients of sex, age, marital status, years of formal education, household size and farm size were positively correlated, indicating that an increase in the values of the coefficients of these variables had a higher likelihood of positively influencing the livelihood diversification status of the respondents. Furthermore, the coefficients of income, amount of loan obtained, number of dependants and farming experience were negative. Hence, an increase in the value of any of these aforementioned variables negatively influenced the likelihood diversification status of the youths. It was deduced from the hypothesis tested that there was no significant difference between the income of the youths who were primarily farmers and that of the non-farming youths and that livelihood diversification of the youth farmers had no significant effect on their income. This implied that having multiple jobs did not necessarily mean that the youths made a better income or had better living standards.
Keywords: Youths, Livelihood diversification, probit