Verifying the Relevance of a Vulnerability to Food Insecurity Index in Practice for Households in South Nigeria

ABSTRACT

This paper examined the relevance of the Vulnerability to Food Insecurity Index (VFII) in practice for households in South-South region of Nigeria. The main objectives were to verify the result of the VFII with real life experience and to understand why households are vulnerable to food insecurity using qualitative insight. The paper applied both quantitative and qualitative methods. The main findings reveal that the indictors of the index were able to reflect real-life experiences on the ground. However, applying the index to local community requires greater consideration of the heterogeneous population and relative importance of indicators. Thus flexible weight system is recommended when the index depends on local conditions.

KEYWORDS:

• Food security
• vulnerability
• social indices
• validity
• Nigeria

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund.