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Health is profoundly influenced by several factors outside the traditional realm of healthcare. This paper employed a two-step Heckman selectivity model to examine factors influencing the decision to spend on health and the effects of economic shocks on health expenditure. The results from the first stage shows that the likelihood of spending on health increased with age, education, income, and decreases if the household is living in the northern region of Nigeria and uses mosquito bed-net. The findings from the second stage estimation show that a fall in the price of food items, an increase in the price of inputs for household enterprises and loss of job are the significant shocks that affect household health expenditure. Based on these findings, this study concluded that fall in the prices of major food items consumed within the household increased income available for health care among the farmers. Going forward, the study recommends the provision of holistic health-economic-welfare interventions for the marginalized rural populace in Nigeria.

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The increase in the geographical mobility of labour as a result of poverty, unemployment and unstable economic conditions, among other factors, especially among professionals, has been associated with a brain drain in Nigeria. Despite the high level of migration and subsequent remittances from migrants, a large proportion of Nigerians still live in poverty. The increased participation of women in migration in the country also brings to the fore the existence of gender-specific migration experiences and how this has in turn affected their households. Based on gender, this study assesses the extent of labour mobility, its determinants and how it influences remittance inflows and household poverty using the logit regression model Propensity Score Matching and Linear Regression with Endogenous Treatment Effect Approach. Results reveal that while more males travelled for employment purposes, more females travelled due to marriage arrangements. More of the migrants that were working after migration had worked before migration and had the highest average amount of remittance sent to households. The study shows that labour mobility increases the amount of remittance sent to households. However, the increase was higher among male migrants than female migrants. More than half of the migrants had poor households; meanwhile, labour mobility was found to reduce the extent of poverty. The study recommended that policies that improve the welfare of labour and reduce the brain drain, unemployment and closures of enterprises in the country should be put in place. Also, effective policies and interventions that promote the use of remittances to achieve maximum reductions in poverty should be pursued.

In Nigeria, unemployment in rural areas translates to economic problems, such as high levels of rural–urban migration. Interventions aimed at promoting rural transformation and development are designed to generate employment by promoting the growth of sectors such as manufacturing and services in rural areas. In this study, the General Household Survey (GHS) panel data for the post-planting and post-harvest periods of the 2011/2012 and 2015/2016 cropping seasons for Nigeria was used to investigate developments in rural areas in Nigeria between 2011 and 2015, and identified how these developments influenced labor market outcomes among rural youths. Fixed effect models were employed to control for unobserved heterogeneity that may exist because of the different years in the data used. Key levers of sustainable social and economic development, such as access to finance, health services, markets, and infrastructure such as electricity, were considered. The empirical results from the study revealed that being educated as well as having access to infrastructure and information had positive effects on the number of youths that took up wage/salary employment in the rural areas. The study concluded that the diversification of youths into other sectors would have higher growth effects on the development of rural areas, as they can invest more in agriculture, while also reducing the level of dependence on the sector. The study recommends an increase in budgetary allocations for education and rural development projects, with a special focus on electricity and financial institutions, while increasing access to information on available job opportunities.