Contributions of Agricultural Products Street Hawking To Urban Children Wellbeing In Ibadan Metropolis, Oyo-State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study assessed the contributions of agricultural products street hawking to urban children wellbeing in Ibadan metropolis of Oyo state Nigeria. Data were collected on socio-economic characteristics, benefits involved, challenges, constraints, and problems; attitude of the respondents and the subjective wellbeing of the respondents. A multi stage sampling technique was used to select respondents for the study. Snowball technique was used to purposively select children that hawked agricultural products. A total of one hundred and forty-three (143) respondents were used for the study. Data obtained were analysed using both descriptive and inferential statistics such as frequency count, percentage, mean, rank, standard deviation an chi-square analysis.The results showed that 57.3% of the respondents were female while 42.7% were male, with mean age of 12.0±2.8,. Household size ( ̅ =6.2±2.5), mean of estimated daily income of the respondents was 1324.1±519.6, with 5.6±1.5 average number of days spent hawking per week. The top three reasons respondent gave for involving in street hawking includes poverty ( ̅ =1.48±0.5) support the family ( ̅ = 1.52±0.5) and unemployment nature of their parents ( ̅ =1.78±0.4). More than half (59.4%) of the respondents considered street hawking beneficial. Educationally, most (65.0%) of the respondents have poor wellbeing, while 53.8% and 53.1% have good psychological and health wellbeing respectively. In general, majority (83.2%) of the respondents had poor wellbeing status ( ̅ =97.39±13.7). Significant relationship exist between parent marital status (χ2=8.371; p=0.039), household size (r=19.689; p=0.032), daily income (r=26.285; p=0.035) and wellbeing status; as well as poverty (0.000) and unemployment of parents (0.003) as factors influencing street hawking and wellbeing status of the respondents. It is concluded that the wellbeing status of children who hawk agricultural products in Ibadan Metropolis was poor in spite of the income earned from the hawking. Efficient and effective delivery of social safety net programmes should be put in place to improve the poverty situation of parents and discourage/reduce street hawking practices among children.