Gender Differentials in Income Diversification Among Farm Households in Oyo State, Nigeria

The study was carried out to assess gender differentials in income diversification among farm households in Oyo state, Nigeria. A three-stage sampling technique was adopted to select one hundred and twenty respondents (120). Descriptive statistics, Mean of Income Shares, Simpsons Index of Diversity and Tobit regression model was used to analyze the data. The results show that, the average age of the respondents was 47.49 years, average household size is 7 and majority (74.36%) of household members were within 18-60 years of age bracket. The average farm size of the farmers is 1.94 ha and 68.4% had a minimum of primary school education. The mean farming experience was 12.34years while the average annual income of respondents is N113,170.83. Female respondents generated highest proportion of income (0.352) from Food Crop Production while male respondents generated highest proportion of income (0.383) from Cash Crop Production. Also, 90% of male respondents and 85% of female respondents embraced income diversification. The result of the probit model shows that age, number of households members >60 age bracket and education status all have negative coefficients which imply a negative probability relationship with the probability of income diversification. It does mean that any increase in any of these variables will leads to a decrease in probability of income diversification in among male farmers in the study area. However, household size, number of households members within 18- 60 age bracket and income has positive probability relationship with income diversification status of the male farmers. Again, household size, number of households members between 18-60 age bracket, farm size and income have positive probability relationship with income diversification status significantly influence the probability of income diversification among the female farmers.. The study concluded that the respondents’ socio-economic characteristics influences the degree of income diversification in the study area. It was therefore recommended that relevant stakeholders should introduce more gender specific enterprises.