Magnitudes and Diagnostics of Spatial Disparity in Urban – Rural Household Welfare in Nigeria

The purpose of the study was to analyze the magnitudes and diagnostics of disparity in urban-rural household welfare in Nigeria. This was necessitated by the fact that, apart from some pockets of income disparity analyses, no spatial analysis of urban-rural disparity in welfare presently exists in the country. To achieve the aim, relevant data were sourced from Annual Abstract of Statistics 2016and 2017 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 2016-17. The welfare status was computed by weighted sum of household assets, while the disparities between rural and urban areas were computed by absolute and relative disparity indexes. The determinants of disparity in household welfare were analyzed by regression statistics. The results show that on the average rural households are 50.34% lower in welfare status than the urban areas while the regression model accounts for 95.6% of the urban-rural disparities in the country. This calls for concerted efforts toward reducing the inequality in development between the urban and rural areas in the country. To this end, it is recommended that rural-urban linkage development strategy be adopted and that massive rural infrastructure development particularly road construction and rural electrification be embarked upon by the three ties of government in the country .This will not only reduce the imbalance, but will increase the interaction between urban and rural areas, which is necessary for the achievement of a balanced development.