POVERTY-ECONOMIC GROWTH NEXUS: THE NIGERIAN EXPERIENCE

The relationship between economic growth and poverty is one of the major themes of current development literature and thinking. Consequently, this study empirically examines the relationship between Real Economic Growth and Poverty in Nigeria over the period 1995-2022 using time series data. Due to the problem of non availability of time series data on poverty we used per capital income as a proxy for poverty and while economic growth was capture with real gross domestic product. We employed Dynamic model, specifically, Distributed Lag Model (DLM). After adopting 3 lag lengths initially, we applied Granger-marginalization procedure to remove some lag variables that were redundant from our several modelling. In the long run, we stick to one period lag length. The output of our estimation was quite satisfactory as the results met the economic a priori, econometric and statistical criteria. The empirical findings show that real gross domestic product has positive relationship with per capital income. Secondly, real gross domestic product does not to have a major impact on per capital income which is used in this analysis to capture poverty.