Calidad de vida laboral

The result of marginal benefit incidence analysis presented in table 8 suggests that a 1% increase in spending on primary school enrolment, secondary school enrolment, child vaccinations, prenatal consultation, postnatal consultation, access to pipe-borne water and electricity will lead to increases of 1.16% for primary school enrolment, 1.04% for secondary school enrolment, 1.10% for child vaccinations, 1.16% for prenatal consultations, 0.92% postnatal consultation, 0.78% for access of water and 1.00% for electricity among the poorest income group. The same values for the richest income group were about 0.84% (primary school enrolment), 0.79% (secondary school enrolment), 0.87% (child vaccination), 0.71% (prenatal consultation), 0.74% (postnatal consultation), 1.18% (access to water) and 0.88% (electricity). This table implies that the poorest group would benefit more than the richest group from an expansion of primary school, secondary school, child vaccinations, prenatal consultations and access to electricity, while the richest income group would benefit more than the poorest income group from the expansion of pipe-borne water in Nigeria.

The poor and average income groups would benefit more than the other income groups from an expansion of postnatal health care provisions.

Since children from the poorest group are more likely to attend public primary and secondary schools than children from the richest group, it is possible that increasing spending on public schools would benefit children from the poorest group more than children from the richest group. In general, public primary school is tuition free and public secondary schools are subsidized in Nigeria, which means that expanding access improves access for children from the poorest group. While school-aged children from the richest quintile may often continue their education in private secondary schools even with an expansion of public primary and secondary schools, middle income households may decide to take advantage of expanded opportunities in primary and secondary education and could therefore benefit more than the richest income group from an expansion of primary and secondary school education in Nigeria. This may explain the higher marginal benefit incidences of spending on primary school for the poor (1.0333) and average (1.0224) income groups than for the richest income group (0.8391) in Nigeria (see equation 12 for the mathematical definition of these statistics).

An expansion in the child vaccination programme would benefit the poorest income group more than the richest income group because the poorest households tend to have more children than the richest ones and hence may need this service more than households in the richest income group. The positive effect of the UNICEF vaccination campaign in Nigeria may also explain the improved odds of vaccination for children from the poorest households, in part due to efforts to reach out to public schools and religious places of worship to target children in these households.

Table 8 reveals that the poorest group will benefit more than the richest from an expansion of prenatal consultations, while the middle income group will benefit more in the case of postnatal consultations. Adekolu-John (1989) demonstrated that postnatal care was not a priority to nursing mothers in Nigeria (the majority of whom are illiterate and poor) and was not even a priority to health care providers.19 This may explain the fact that, even if provisions for postnatal care are expanded, the poorest group are unlikely to benefit as much as the middle

income group from increased service because the poorest group may not consider postnatal health care as a necessity once their child has been safely delivered.

Table 8 also indicates that the richest group will benefit more that the poorest group if the government were to decide to expand pipe-borne water supply. This is because the distribution of pipe-borne water was not in the favour of the poor in Nigeria. Table 6 shows that 84% of public spending on access to pipe-borne water was in urban areas, while the other 16% was in rural areas. If this distribution bias against rural areas is not corrected for, the weight of the poor living in rural areas means that an expansion of public provisions for pipe-borne water may not have relatively larger gains for the poorest income group. Another constraint relates to setup fees for opening a piped water connection: increase supply of piped water may not benefit the poor, who may not be able to afford these initial charges.

It appears that increased provisions for electricity supply in Nigeria will benefit the poorest group more than the richest income group because most wealthy households have backup generators at home, while the poorest income groups can use new electricity supply for lighting and other activities.

The general observation about the marginal benefit incidence in Nigeria, as presented in Table 8, is that the marginal benefit incidence is higher for the poorest income group in relation to public services which are most used by the poorest income group (as is the case for primary school, secondary school, child vaccination, prenatal consultation and access to electricity), and the marginal benefit incidence is low for the poorest income group in the public services which those in the poorest income group are less likely to use (such as postnatal consultation and access to pipe-borne water). The poorest income group’s participation rates were 60% for primary school, 39% for secondary school, 44% for child vaccinations, 28% for prenatal consultations and 30% for access to electricity and were just 12% for postnatal consultation and 14% for access to pipe-borne water, as indicated in table 8. This suggests that the poor’s initial rate of access to a public service may determine the relative extent to which the poor will benefit from an expansion of that public service. This finding is consistent with the marginal benefit incidences estimated by Ajwad and Wodon (2003; 2007). They indicated that there are important differences between the marginal benefit incidences for different types of services, and that the marginal benefit incidence often tends to be more pro-poor than the benefit incidence, especially

when the non-poor already have high levels of access. Relatively low access rates thus suggest that special efforts may be needed to ensure that the poor benefit from future increases in access.

Table 8: Marginal benefit incidence of public spending in Nigeria

Public service Poorest Poor Average Rich Richest Participation rate by the poorest quintile (%) Primary school 1.1586 1.0333 1.0224 0.9466 0.8391 60 Secondary school 1.0394 1.0164 1.0986 1.0532 0.7924 39 Vaccination 1.0963 0.9267 1.3890 0.7148 0.8732 44 Prenatal consultation 1.1633 1.1003 1.0280 0.9996 0.7088 28 Postnatal consultation 0.9179 1.2438 1.1693 0.9256 0.7433 12 Pipe-borne water 0.7759 0.7814 0.9624 1.3053 1.1751 14 Electricity 1.0047 0.9834 1.1243 1.0083 0.8784 30

Source: Authors’ calculations based on NBS (2004)