Livelihood Diversification Sources of Female Household Heads in Rural Communities of Osun State
Abstract
The study investigated the livelihood of female household heads (FHH) in rural communities of Osun State. Specifically, it described the personal and socio-economic characteristics of female household heads, identified their livelihood sources and investigated the problems faced their sources of external assistance/support. Multi-stage sampling procedure was employed to select 120 respondents to whom structured questionnaires were administered to elicit requisite information. Frequency counts, percentage, means and standard deviation were used for data analysis. The results showed that the female household heads were mainly widows (55%) and the mean age and household size were 50.46±13.07 and 5.46±2.09, respectively. The major livelihood sources were petty trading (97.5%), crop processing (57.5%), farming (48.3%) and reselling of farm produce (22.2%). Financial difficulty was a paramount problem identified, followed by lack of contact with extension agents (71.7%) and gender discrimination in obtaining land on lease for farming (39.2). Majority (65.8%) of FHH did not have external sources of financial assistance while 21.7% were supported by their children. The study concluded that livelihoods of FHH were diversified mainly within agriculture and trading enterprises.
Key words: Livelihood diversification, Female household heads, Rural communities.
This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.
JAE supports free online communication and exchange of knowledge as the most effective way of ensuring that the fruits of research and development practice are made widely available. It is therefore committed to open access, which, for authors, enables the widest possible dissemination of their findings and, for readers, increases their ability to discover pertinent information. The Journal adopts and uses the CC BY-NC-ND license. Under this license users are permitted to: Copy and distribute the article (non-commercially); you can’t change or alter the article in anyway; Users are not allowed to data mine the article.
