Effect of Malaria on Rural Households’ Farm Income in Barkin Ladi LGA, Plateau State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study was carried out to analyze the effect of malaria on rural households’ farm income in Barikin Ladi Local Government Area, Plateau State, Nigeria. Data were obtained from a multi-stage random sampling of one hundred and sixty-five rural farming household heads through the use of a well-structured questionnaire. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and linear regression analysis. The descriptive statistics results showed that a majority of the respondents were male (73.9%), between the age brackets of 30 years and 49 years (70.3%), married (78.2%), educated (92.12%) and earned an income less than or equal to 200,000 Naira per quarter year (55.8%). The mean age, household size, estimated farm income and farm size were 41 years, 8 persons, 198,352 Naira per quarter year and 1.93 hectares respectively. The result of the regression showed that there was a significant effect of age (β = 15.674; p < 0.05), household size (β = 8.897; p < 0.1), farm size (β = 1.016; p < 0.01), periods of incapacitation due to malaria (β = -0.894; p < 0.01) and total income lost due to malaria (β = -0.735; p < 0.01) on total annual income of rural households in Barkin Ladi LGA, Plateau State, Nigeria. It was concluded that malaria had negative consequence on the rural households’ farm income. It was recommended that there should be intervention programs should promote the awareness of about malaria and the measures to combat it for an effective prevention and control of the malaria.

Keywords: Nigeria, Malaria, rural households, farm income