Nigeria is rated among the highest recipient of remittances in the world. Several studies have examined the impact of the flow on household consumption without conducting a comparative analysis of this impact in the rural areas, urban areas and in the geo-political zones of Nigeria. Besides, there are several types of remittances and their impacts on household consumption expenditure need to be investigated. This study, therefore, is designed to analyse the impact of the various types of remittances (aggregate, cash, food and other remittances) on household consumption in the rural areas, urban areas and in the geo-political zones of Nigeria. The study made use of data from the Harmonised Nigeria Living Standard Survey of 2009/2010. The 4,031 households that received remittances out of the 76,168 households from the Survey were considered. Data were dis-aggregated into rural, urban and the six geo-political zones of Nigeria. The Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) technique was used to estimate the model while Probit regression was carried out as a robustness check of the OLS estimates. The methodological approach was similar to Mukherjee and Benson (2003) and it is based on modeling the natural log of the total per capita consumption expenditure as the dependent variable. The independent variables include vectors of households, community and regional level characteristics. The impacts of the various types of remittances are mixed in the rural areas, urban areas and in the geo-political zones of Nigeria.

Keywords: Remittances, Households Consumption, Ordinary Least Squares technique, Natural Logarithm, Probit.