In Nigeria, unemployment in rural areas translates to economic problems, such as high levels of rural–urban migration. Interventions aimed at promoting rural transformation and development are designed to generate employment by promoting the growth of sectors such as manufacturing and services in rural areas. In this study, the General Household Survey (GHS) panel data for the post-planting and post-harvest periods of the 2011/2012 and 2015/2016 cropping seasons for Nigeria was used to investigate developments in rural areas in Nigeria between 2011 and 2015, and identified how these developments influenced labor market outcomes among rural youths. Fixed effect models were employed to control for unobserved heterogeneity that may exist because of the different years in the data used. Key levers of sustainable social and economic development, such as access to finance, health services, markets, and infrastructure such as electricity, were considered. The empirical results from the study revealed that being educated as well as having access to infrastructure and information had positive effects on the number of youths that took up wage/salary employment in the rural areas. The study concluded that the diversification of youths into other sectors would have higher growth effects on the development of rural areas, as they can invest more in agriculture, while also reducing the level of dependence on the sector. The study recommends an increase in budgetary allocations for education and rural development projects, with a special focus on electricity and financial institutions, while increasing access to information on available job opportunities.

Sub-Sahara Africa countries has the highest proportion of people with the lowest access to basic amenities required to live well. Nigeria contributes significantly to the low quality of life in the region. Many governments particularly in Africa adopted government decentralization as a major policy reform to improve the distribution of public goods and services. The overall outcome of government decentralization is believed to be more dependent on the extent of fiscal decentralization. This study examined the influence of fiscal decentralization on indicators of health, education, household wealth and living environment.The estimation technique used in this study is based on Vector autoregression (VAR) model.Besides, an impulse response function (orf) function and a Granger causality test was also generated as post-estimation to confirm the results. The results revealed that though the growth in the previous revenue of states and local governments had an inverse relationship with improvements in the indicators. The expenditure of sub national governments had a weak effect but it had an increasing influence on all the indicators except child mortality. The results of the Granger causality test revealed that variations in child mortality rates and access to improved water cannot be explained by both revenue and expenditure of the sub national governments in Nigeria. The quality of life people live can be improved if the issue of financial constraints and accountability at the sub national level of governments is addressed.