Gender Vulnerabilities: Modelling the Relationship Between Labour Market Performance and Energy Consumer Price Inflation in Nigeria

This study examined the relationship between labour-market performance and energy consumer price inflation (CPI) in Nigeria from a gender-vulnerability perspective using annual data from 1991 – 2024 and analyzed using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) dynamic estimation and necessary diagnostic tests. Female labour vulnerability, male labour vulnerability and the gender vulnerability gap were constructed from gender-disaggregated labour-market indicators, while energy consumer price inflation, headline inflation, food inflation, global energy-price inflation and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth were used as explanatory and control variables. The findings showed that energy consumer price inflation was highly volatile over the study period and rose sharply in the most recent years. The ARDL estimates revealed that female labour vulnerability was persistent over time and GDP growth had the clearest vulnerability-reducing association. The analysis also showed that global energy-price pressure was positively associated with female labour vulnerability, suggesting that energy shocks were more visible when analyzed through gender gaps rather than through female labour indicators alone. The study concluded that energy consumer price inflation is a relevant gender-vulnerability issue in Nigeria, but its labour-market effect is better understood through transmission channels such as informal employment, self-employment, transport costs, food inflation, unpaid care burdens and weak social protection. The study recommends that energy-price reforms should not be treated only as macroeconomic price measures but linked with gender-sensitive impact assessment, targeted energy infrastructure support, labour-market formalization, clean cooking access, care-support systems, social protection and improved gender-disaggregated labour and energy data.