RESILIENCE TO FOOD INSECURITY AMONG RURAL HOUSEHOLDS IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Food Insecurity (FI) has been on the increase in Nigeria particularly among rural households. Resilience helps households to withstand FI. Shocks such as drought, floods, illness and death of household head reduce resilience among the households thereby increasing FI. Available studies on FI in Nigeria have focused on determinants of FI with little research efforts on resilience. Therefore, resilience to food insecurity among rural household in Nigeria was investigated. Data from general household survey panel (2010/2011, 2012/2013 and 2015/2016) were used for the study. Information on socio-economic characteristics (age, sex, educational level, household size, marital status, monthly income, membership of cooperatives, and access to extension services), food security indicators (expenditure on food and quantity of food consumed), and resilience indicators (access to basic services, adaptive capacity, assets and social safety nets) were utilised. Households were categorised into food insecure (1) and food secure (0). Resilience among households was also grouped into low resilience (0.0000-0.4100) and high resilience (0.4101-1.0000). Food security transition among the households was grouped into always food secure, moved from food secure into food insecure, moved from food insecure to food secure and always food insecure. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, food calories benchmark (2,260 kcal/day), Forster Greer and Thorbecke, principal components analysis, multiple-indicator-multiple-causes model, Markov chain and fixed effect logit regression at α0.05. Majority of the household heads (81.0%) were males with mean age of 53.0±14.86 years, 75.0% were married with a household size of 7.3±3.70 persons. Monthly income was ₦31,363.79±30,374.42 and 33.4% of the household had no formal education. Households that were food insecure and food secure were 36.6% and 63.4%, respectively. Incidence, depth and severity of food insecurity were 0.39, -0.19 and 0.68, respectively. Food Insecurity among male (68.9%) was higher than the female headed household (29.8%), while FI among married households (38.0%) was lower than that of unmarried households (41.0%). Out of the total households, 68.2% of those that were food secure, in 2010 were food secure in 2015, while 31.8% of households that were food secure in 2010 were food insecure in 2015. Also, 68.5% of households that were food insecure in 2010 were food secure in 2015, while 31.6% of households that were food insecure in 2010 were food insecure in 2015. At equilibrium, the probability that a household would be food secure was 68.3% and 31.7% for food insecure. Resilience among the households was 0.4±0.06, while among food secure and food insecure households was 0.42±0.07 and 0.39±0.06, respectively. Asset (β=0.6662) safety net (β=3.0575), no experience of flooding (β=0.7769) and no experience of drought (β=0.2257) increased the probability of being resilient to food insecurity, while access to basic services (β=-0.4749), adaptive capacity (β=-0.3674) and death shock (β=-0.0567) decreased it. Being a female headed household (β=0.7368), household size (β=0.0664) and access to extension services (β=0.8458) increased the probability of being food insecure, while resilience (β=-0.1072) and years of formal education (β=-0.0392) decreased it. Resilience reduced food insecurity of rural households. Assets and safety net improved resilience among rural households in Nigeria.