Most of the population of Nigeria is rural and agriculture is
the mainstay of the impoverished people’s livelihood. This
paper estimated the determinants of rural poverty in Nigeria using
the Tobit regression model. Through the multistage sampling
technique, primary data were obtained from 150 rural farming
households using a questionnaire. The Result of Tobit regression
analysis shows that increase in farm income, farm size and amount
of agricultural loan led to a decrease in the level of poverty by
0.9953, 0.1220 and 0.4016 x 10-6 respectively. Membership of
the cooperative by household heads, ownership of certain assets,
access to extension services, and modern farming inputs, increase
in educational attainment and male heads of households decreased
the likelihood of being poor. Findings also reveal that except for
access to loan that is elastic, the responsiveness of the probability
and intensity of poverty to dependency ratio, farming experience,
farm size and income are inelastic.