An Economic Analysis of Poverty, Inequality and Future of Millennium Development Goals in Nigeria

There is daunting challenges and pessimism of achieving the millennium development goals (MDGs) especially in developing countries such as Nigeria. The study on economic analysis of poverty, inequality and future of millennium development goals in Nigeria attempted quantitatively the forecasting of the future possibilities of Nigeria achieving the millennium development goals by 2015 and 2020. It further, evaluated millennium development goals progress in the country. Also, the work examined the
probabilistic relationship of poverty and inequality to millennium development goals. The work is significant for development planning, economic forecasting, policy evaluation, program analysis and basis for policy formulation, especially at this time when there is still years to make positive adjustments. The methodologies used are forecasting models and applied econometric techniques to development economics. The former include three sophisticated models; Trend regression, Holt's exponential
smoothing and Box-Jenkins methods as well as composite indices, while the latter comprise of; fixed-effects, random-effects, pooled least square, weighted least square,
probit and logit models. Although previous empirical studies were limited in analyzing few MDG indicators, relied heavily on naive projections and pro-poor programs
evaluation have been neglected as well as probabilistic relationship between inequality and millennium development goals. In this study however, all these were overcome to
some extent. Results of the main findings revealed that, millennium development goals are not achievable by 2015 and 2020 in Nigeria under the current trends as the models
suggested. Nevertheless, there will be aggregate progress over the forecast period. Moreover, poverty and inequality are both rising as the models indicated, implying that
these may derail the achievement of millennium development goals. The original contributions of this research among others, includes; extending MDG theory analysis to more indicators, application of three forecasting techniques into MDG theory, extending Kuznets' hypothesis testing to country-wide panel data analysis, in an attempt to understand the dynamism of MDGs, applied econometric models were developed and operationalized. Conclusively, the study contributes to practice by extending MDG composite index and originated Nigerian MDG composite indices.