Abstract

Livelihood strategy is a function of livelihood assets, access to productive resources and opportunities available to a set of people. Given that female headed households (FHHs) tend to be more vulnerable than their male counterpart owing to greater difficulties in accessing productive resources such as land, labour, credit facilities, amongst others, this study analyzed the livelihood strategies of household heads in rural areas of Osun State, Nigeria. Specifically, it described the personal characteristics of household heads, determined their accessibility to productive resources and identified constraints inhibiting accessibility to productive resources. Multistage sampling procedure was used to select 252 respondents for the study. Structured interview schedule and Focus Group Discussions were used to elicit relevant information. Mean, standard deviation and one way ANOVA were used for data analysis. Results show that 60.0 per cent and 66.7 per cent of Male Heads of Households (MHH) and Female Heads of Households (FHH) aged between 31 and 60 years respectively, while 73.5 per cent and 80.8 per cent, respectively, had below 6 years of formal education. Also, more FHH (69.2 %) engaged in small/micro enterprises than male (32.6 %). Contrarily, more MHH engaged in skilled activities and wage labour as livelihood strategies. Furthermore, the study established a gap in accessibility to productive resources (F = 6.605, p = 0.01). However, there was no significant difference in constraints limiting the accessibility by males and females (F = 2.227, p = 0.113). Poor access to resources was found to be a general phenomenon of rural households, and lack of adequate funds, rather than gender discrimination was responsible for this. It was concluded that, despite the gap in accessibility to productive resources, both categories of households engaged in a variety or mix of activities as livelihood strategies.

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