Econometric Evaluation of Urbanization, Unemployment and Incidence of Poverty Paradox In Nigeria : An Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model Estimation Approach

The movement of people from an economic deserted area in search of favorable economic fortune elsewhere has been an age long practice, that was birthed and promoted by poverty, extreme weather condition, terrorism, ethic and communal crisis among other social and economic vices present in Nigeria and across the globe. The need to re-assess the effect of urbanization and unemployment on the incidence of poverty in Nigeria was birthed by the desire to unearth the intrinsic and extrinsic implications it exerts on the economic well-being of the population. To achieve this end, the study adopted the use of autoregressive distributed lag model to regress the relationship between the regressed and the aggressors in the regression line, with empirical justifications indicating that unemployment has an additive implication on incidence of poverty in the country, implying that the increasing youth unemployment remains at the bedrock of increasing poverty rate across the Nation, while urbanization indicated a rather negative relational position with incidence of poverty in Nigeria. The study therefore recommends the establishment of developmental agenda and mechanisms to eliminate unemployment in the country, however it is evident that the Nation lost developmental focus, when national planning culture was replaced by political manifestoes that only exist for eight years, without any long run sustainability. Therefore, it is imperative that the National government establishment a long-term mechanism aimed at tackling the growth rate of unemployment in the country in bid to curtail the growth and decrease in the incidence of poverty across of the Nation. The study therefore concluded that, urbanization and unemployment remain the predator to poverty in Nigeria and as such to track down poverty, both urban and rural centers must be growing at relatively same pace for sustainability of the society