Spatial and Socio-Economic Dimensions of Street Children in Ibadan, Nigeria
Consequent to the widely recognized influence of rapid population growth on streetism, this paper examines the spatial and socio-economic dimensions of the street children phenomenon in Ibadan, Nigeria. The study analyses the intra-urban pattern of child streetism and analyses the characteristics of street children in the study area. The study participants are children working and or living on the streets of Ibadan, the administrative headquarters of Oyo state, Nigeria. The study enumerates street children in selected activity nuclei in urban high, medium and low residential densities. 10% of the observed number of street children was included in the survey using the convenience sampling method. In all, a total of one hundred and fifty-two (152) copies of questionnaires were administered to the willing street children. The study employs Z-scores to compare the intensity of the problem and ANOVA to analyze the variation in the incidence of street children within urban residential densities. The result of the ANOVA shows that with f=14.587 and p= 0.001, there is a significant difference in the observed variations in the incidence of street children among residential densities.
