Abstract

Recently, the Federal Government of Nigeria released the 2022 Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) report in a bid to reduce extreme poverty. It is a way of demonstrating a commitment to the first goal of the Sustainable Development Goals, which is eradicating poverty in all its dimensions. Therefore, this study examines the determinants of poverty in Anambra State, Nigeria. The objectives of the study were to ascertain the percentage of the poorest in the State, and determine the factors that impact on the poverty rate in the state. The study employed a well-designed questionnaire to obtain data in all the 188 communities under the 21 local government area of the state. The statistical tools used in the study were the Random Forest analysis. The Random Forest classification analysis was employed to predict the Poverty Status of the respondents. The respondent variable for the study was Poverty Status (POVMI) which was obtained using the International Wealth index (IWI), while the explanatory variables considered for the prediction of the response variable were Age Interval (Age), Satisfaction status of households living in Anambra State (SLR), Perception of respondents on poverty rate over the last 8 years (PPOVT8), Choice of health facility used by household when sick (CHF), type of fuel does your household used for cooking (SFCl), and Highest educational qualification of respondents (HEQ). The findings of the study revealed that 6% of households are poorest while majority of the poorest resides in the rural area (96%). It was found that the highest educational qualification of the majority of the poorest was primary education (47.3%). Further findings showed that importance of the explanatory variables was in the following order of magnitude; type of fuel does your household used for cooking, Satisfaction status of households living in Anambra State, Choice of health facility used by household when sick, Age, Perception of respondents on poverty rate over the last 8 years, and Highest educational qualification of respondents. Hence, the type of fuel does your household used for cooking has the most impact on the Poverty Status while the Highest educational qualification of respondents recorded the least impact. This result implies that the poorest in the state do not use clean energy for cooking.