European Business & Management 2018; 4(1): 9-17 http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/j/ebm doi: 10.11648/j.ebm.20180401.12 ISSN: 2575-579X (Print); ISSN: 2575-5811 (Online) Welfare Deprivation of Women in Rural North-West, Nigeria Oladokun Yetunde Olasimbo Mary 1 , Kemisola Omorinre Adenegan 1 , Isaac Busayo Oluwatayo 2 1 Department of Agricultural Economics, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria 2 Department of Agricultural Economics and Animal Production, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Limpopo, Limpopo, South Africa Email address: yetunde.oladokun@gmail.com (O. Y. O. Mary) To cite this article: Oladokun Yetunde Olasimbo Mary, Kemisola Omorinre Adenegan, Isaac Busayo Oluwatayo. Welfare Deprivation of Women in Rural North- West, Nigeria. European Business & Management. Vol. 4, No. 1, 2018, pp. 9-17. doi: 10.11648/j.ebm.20180401.12 Received: October 1, 2017; Accepted: November 11, 2017; Published: December 14, 2017 Abstract: Women are important segment of the human population and appropriate investment in their welfare would be of great benefit at individual, household, and community levels. There has been an increasing incidence of welfare deprivation among women in rural Nigeria. Thus this study examined the welfare deprivation of women in rural North-West (NW) Nigeria. Secondary data from Nigeria Demographic Health Survey (NDHS, 2013) was used for this study and 6798 rural women were sampled in the survey. Data analysis was done using descriptive statistics, fuzzy analysis and logit regression. The mean age of women in NW is 30 years and a standard deviation of 9. Majority of the women in NW had no formal education (85.80%) and this is a major contributor to women’s welfare. Women in this region have a mean household size of 7 and this had an effect on their deprivation status. The Deprivation Index for rural women ranges from 0.01 to 0.82 with a mean value of 0.30. Educational attainment, employment type, household size, marital status, age of the woman, state of residence determines a woman’s deprivation status in rural NW. The study concluded that women are deprived in rural NW. Government and non- Governmental Organisations should put in place measures to augment human capacity development of the women in NW through increased school funding in order to overcome the financial constraints of parents involvement in educating up-coming generations. Keywords: Asset, Deprivation, North-West Nigeria, Welfare, Women 1. Introduction Deprivation is a state of observable and demonstrable disadvantage relative to the local community or the wider society or nation to which the individual, family or group belongs [20] [18]. This disadvantage may be with regard to food, clothing, housing condition, or lack of education and exclusion from the decision- making class among others. A person is therefore considered deprived to the extent that he falls short of the level attained by his contemporaries within the same society, or below generally acceptable social status [19; 16]. Women play a very vital role in the development of communities and nations. Development is incomplete if it fails to comprehend the contributions of women [6]. Women in the North-West are particularly deprived compared to their counterpart in the south as a result of socio cultural norms and beliefs in their area where women are seen and treated as second class citizens. Women are married off early forfeiting their education and do not acquire the required skill to help them in life. They are particularly dependent on their husbands who has to take care of three or four of such women and their children. Thus women are limited and they continually remain in poor. Welfare among women is determined not only by their health status, but from other dimensions like education, food and nutrition, housing and sanitation characteristics, asset ownership, autonomy, type of employment, information access, and others. Several studies had considered the issue of welfare deprivation at individual and household level. [13] examined the level of welfare deprivation among riverine households in Southwestern Nigeria using five dimensions consisting of sixteen welfare indicators. Using the principal component analysis, the deprivation index of the households ware aggregated into a three-component deprivation structure, namely: housing condition deprivation; health and nutrition deprivation; and social network deprivation. Considering the deprivation characteristics of the riverine households, access to public basic educational facilities as well as other stable