Nexus between Economic Growth and Poverty in a Digital Era

Abstract

Most of the countries of the world are in the digital world. With digitalization, these countries
expand their rate of economic growth and management in return enhance the living conditions of
their people. In recent years, the Nigerian economy has experienced an increase in the economic
growth rate although disappointedly or unfortunately the poverty rate is equally increasing even
at an alarming rate in the economy. This paper aims to analyze the impact of the rate of economic
growth on poverty in a digital era in Nigeria. Time-series data used for the study were collected for
twenty-seven years (i.e. from 1990 to 2016). Simple regression analysis was used to analyze the
data using the Econometric software package of Stata. The findings show that there is no
statistically significant impact of economic growth on poverty in Nigeria. p-value is greater than
alpha 0.05 i.e. p-value= 0.5584?0.05. It connotes that economic growth alone cannot do it all to
guarantee significant poverty reduction in the economy of the country. Other macroeconomic
issues should be incorporated such as equitable distribution of income, wealth, resources and
benefits from growth, full employment, intensify effort to reduce corruption as well as education
for all, these are possible with more support for the technology to realize a meaningful poverty
reduction.