BLESSING UCHENNA MBERU Brown University* and Abia State University** Household Structure and Living Conditions in Nigeria Data on 7,632 households from the 1999 Niger- ia Demographic and Health Survey are used to examine household structure and living condi- tions in Nigeria. The study finds significant dis- advantage in living conditions of single-adult, female- and single-adult, male-headed house- holds relative to two-parent households. Extended households show no significant advantage in living conditions over two-parent households if headed by women but are consis- tently advantaged if headed by men. Although extended households do not entirely wipe out the disadvantage of female headship on house- hold living conditions, they show a significant mitigating potential. Efforts to understand and alleviate poverty in Nigeria may need to address simultaneously gender imbalances in access to livelihood opportunities and factors that foster nucleation of family structure into single-adult households. A large body of research has documented the relationship between the increase in female pov- erty and the increase in female-headed house- holds in the last three decades (Astone & McLanahan, 1991; McLanahan & Booth, 1989; Wojtkiewicz, Mclanahan, & Garfinkel, 1990). In sub-Saharan Africa, reports on the various di- mensions of poverty are consistently bleak, but relative to the United States, where a burgeoning research literature exists, very little is known about the linkages between family structure and economic resources (Gage, Sommerfelt, & Paini, 1997). A small but growing body of research in the region, however, suggests increasing con- centration of poverty among women and associ- ates this increase with the rise in the proportion of households headed or principally maintained by women (Lloyd & Gage-Brandon, 1993). This suggestion finds support in the recognition by the World Bank (2001) that gender matters every- where, though underscoring that gender relations strongly differ from place to place and are highly variable over time. Different gender outcomes in different countries have been attributed to the im- plications of various cultural and institutional in- fluences, leading researchers to emphasize the need for replication of analysis using nationally representative data sets in order to understand specific country contexts (Quisumbing, Haddad, & Pena, 2001). In the Nigerian context, Ajakaiye and Adeyeye (2001) identified a considerable deficit in the con- ceptualization, measurement, knowledge of de- terminants, and overall nature of poverty in the country. This deficit reiterates an earlier assess- ment that poverty alleviation programs in the country frequently run into implementation crises hinged on weak conceptualization and inability to properly characterize the poor (Silver, 1994). In particular, the relationship between household structure and poverty remains largely unexplored. Building on previous studies, and using nationally representative data, this article *Department of Sociology, Population Studies and Training Center, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912 (Blessing_ Mberu@brown.edu). **Department of Sociology, Abia State University, P.M.B. 2000, Uturu, Nigeria. Key Words: female-headed households, household struc- ture, Nigeria, poverty, sub-Saharan Africa. Journal of Marriage and Family 69 (May 2007): 513–527 513