One of the critical concerns in Nigeria is how to alleviate poverty in the country. The general prevalence of poverty in Nigeria is paradoxical because the country is one of the biggest oil-producing countries in the world. A 1999 World Bank report for instance showed that some 70 per cent of the population lives below the bread line - usually considered as living on less than US$1.00 a day. This raises a number of very important questions: What are really responsible for the wide prevalence of poverty in Nigeria in the midst of plenty? How is poverty manifested in the country? What alleviation strategies are in place? How effective are they? And what are the implications of all these for the country's democracy project, political stability, nation-building and development discourse? Contributors to this volume address these questions and provide insights into some of the central issues in the discussion of poverty, including how the poor themselves struggle to cope or adapt to their condition. Using multidisciplinary perspectives, the contributors critique the current alleviation strategies and recommend more viable and better- targeted approaches that will sharply reduce the incidence of poverty in Nigeria. _____________________________________________ * Mustapha C. Duze is a Professor of Sociology at Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria. He did his undergraduate studies in Sociology at the University of Ife, Nigeria, and holds a PhD in Demography from the University of Pennsylvania, U.S.A. Professor Duze also holds a Diploma in Survey Sampling from the Institute of Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Abor, U.S.A He was Head of the Department of Sociology at Bayero University (1994-1999) and the Director of the General Studies Unit of the same University (2002 to 2006). He has published widely in scholarly journals and has co-authored several books. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of Bayero University's Journal of interdisciplinary Studies. *Dr. Habu Mohammed holds a PhD in Political Science from Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria. He is currently a senior lecturer in the Department of Political Science, Bayero University, Kano-Nigeria. He has published widely in the areas of political economy, political development, peace studies, human rights, civil society and democratization. He is a co-editor of Readings in Social Science Research (2006) and editor of Concepts and Issues in Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution (2005). He is a Member of the Editorial Board of the faculty-based Journal of Social and Management Studies (JOSAMS). He was also a Fulbright Fellow at the Programme of African Studies (PAS), Northwestern University, Illinois, U.S.A. * Professor Ibrahim Ahmed Kiyawa did his undergraduate studies at the University of Bradford in the United Kingdom and a doctorate degree in Development Economics, from Maxwell School, Syracuse University, New York, USA. Professor Kiyawa was a Dean of the Faculty of Social and Management Sciences, Bayero University, Kano-Nigeria for a long time, and Head of the Department of Economics, which he founded in 1976. Professor Kiyawa has over 30 years of teaching and research experience. He has published extensively in national and international journals and has edited a number of books, including Management of the Nigerian Economy under Democratic Administration (2000), Accountability, Finance, and Financial Discipline in Local Government Administration (1999), Topics on the Nigerian Economy (1988), and Export Promotion as a Strategy for Industrialization (1988). Prof. Kiyawa is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Social and Management Studies ( JOSAMS).

Over the past two decades, the percentage of the world’s population living on less than a dollar a day has been cut in half. How much of that improvement is because of—or in spite of—globalization? While anti-globalization activists mount loud critiques and the media report breathlessly on globalization’s perils and promises, economists have largely remained silent, in part because of an entrenched institutional divide between those who study poverty and those who study trade and finance. Globalization and Poverty bridges that gap, bringing together experts on both international trade and poverty to provide a detailed view of the effects of globalization on the poor in developing nations, answering such questions as: Do lower import tariffs improve the lives of the poor? Has increased financial integration led to more or less poverty? How have the poor fared during various currency crises? Does food aid hurt or help the poor? Poverty, the contributors show here, has been used as a popular and convenient catchphrase by parties on both sides of the globalization debate to further their respective arguments. Globalization and Poverty provides the more nuanced understanding necessary to move that debate beyond the slogans.

This edition of the biennial Poverty and Shared Prosperity report brings sobering news. The COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic and its associated economic crisis, compounded by the effects of armed conflict and climate change, are reversing hard-won gains in poverty reduction and shared prosperity. The fight to end poverty has suffered its worst setback in decades after more than 20 years of progress. The goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030, already at risk before the pandemic, is now beyond reach in the absence of swift, significant, and sustained action, and the objective of advancing shared prosperity—raising the incomes of the poorest 40 percent in each country—will be much more difficult. Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2020: Reversals of Fortune presents new estimates of COVID-19's impacts on global poverty and shared prosperity. Harnessing fresh data from frontline surveys and economic simulations, it shows that pandemic-related job losses and deprivation worldwide are hitting already poor and vulnerable people hard, while also shifting the profile of global poverty to include millions of 'new poor.' Original analysis included in the report shows that the new poor are more urban, better educated, and less likely to work in agriculture than those living in extreme poverty before COVID-19. It also gives new estimates of the impact of conflict and climate change, and how they overlap. These results are important for targeting policies to safeguard lives and livelihoods. It shows how some countries are acting to reverse the crisis, protect those most vulnerable, and promote a resilient recovery. These findings call for urgent action. If the global response fails the world's poorest and most vulnerable people now, the losses they have experienced to date will be minimal compared with what lies ahead. Success over the long term will require much more than stopping COVID-19. As efforts to curb the disease and its economic fallout intensify, the interrupted development agenda in low- and middle-income countries must be put back on track. Recovering from today's reversals of fortune requires tackling the economic crisis unleashed by COVID-19 with a commitment proportional to the crisis itself. In doing so, countries can also plant the seeds for dealing with the long-term development challenges of promoting inclusive growth, capital accumulation, and risk prevention—particularly the risks of conflict and climate change.

Ending poverty and stabilizing climate change will be two unprecedented global achievements and two major steps toward sustainable development. But the two objectives cannot be considered in isolation: they need to be jointly tackled through an integrated strategy. This report brings together those two objectives and explores how they can more easily be achieved if considered together. It examines the potential impact of climate change and climate policies on poverty reduction. It also provides guidance on how to create a “win-win†? situation so that climate change policies contribute to poverty reduction and poverty-reduction policies contribute to climate change mitigation and resilience building. The key finding of the report is that climate change represents a significant obstacle to the sustained eradication of poverty, but future impacts on poverty are determined by policy choices: rapid, inclusive, and climate-informed development can prevent most short-term impacts whereas immediate pro-poor, emissions-reduction policies can drastically limit long-term ones.

The Oxford Handbook of the Social Science of Poverty builds a common scholarly ground in the study of poverty by bringing together an international, inter-disciplinary group of scholars to provide their perspectives on the issue. Contributors engage in discussions about the leading theories and conceptual debates regarding poverty, the most salient topics in poverty research, and the far-reaching consequences of poverty on the individual and societal level.