Education’s effect on food and monetary security in Burkina Faso: A joint semi-parametric and spatial analysis

Abstract

Though adversely impacted by the recent COVID-19 crisis, households’ consumption of food and non-food items are essential components of well-being worldwide. Against this background, the present analysis tests human capital theory predictions by assessing the resilience effect of formal education vis- a-vis food and financial insecurity in Burkina Faso. This is achieved using data on 10,411 households, extracted from the latest available wave of the Burkina Faso’s National Survey on Households Living Conditions, along with geospatial meta-data and semi-parametric modelling techniques. The findings reveal that relaxing the linearity and independence assumptions provides a more robust representation of the systemic and inter-dependent relationship that exists between education, food and monetary security. In fact, education is found to increase the joint likelihood of food and monetary security in the country. Specifically, compared to households headed by individuals with no education, those headed by primary, secondary or higher educated individuals are 19.8%, 49.7% and 1.189 times, respectively, more likely to experience food security, and 40.1%, 77% and 1.723 times, respectively, more likely to come out of poverty. Therefore, easing access to formal education ought to be part of the solution mix sitting squarely at the poverty/food insecurity nexus, for a sustainable future beyond the pandemic. This is indeed supported by the high positive correlation of 0.927 between the incidence of food and monetary security, which suggests that coordinated efforts in those sectors will have much greater development’s returns than isolated initiatives.

Keywords:

• Burkina Faso
• discrete choice modelling
• education
• food security
• poverty
• sustainable development

JEL::

• C50
• I20
• I32
• O50

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) defines four dimensions of food security: food availability, food access, utilization, and stability (FAO 2006). Due to its reliance on secondary data, which does not cover all four dimensions, this paper focuses on access and utilization, and in particular on the role that education plays in improving outcomes along these two dimensions for household consumption goods in general, and food consumption in particular.

2 EICVM: Enquête Intégrale sur les Conditions de Vie des Ménages. Or ‘The National Survey on Household Living Conditions’. See http://www.insd.bf/n/nada/index.php/catalog/ECVM. Retrieved 10 October 2016 from the World Bank Micro-data Library http://microdata.worldbank.org/index.php/catalog/2538/getmicrodata

3 This definition of poverty status is adopted by INSD in Burkina Faso, following international reporting standards set by the World Bank, for EICVM survey harmonization purposes. The officially estimated food poverty line, and overall poverty line reported by INSD, were, respectively, 102,040 CFA; at 153,530 CFA in 2014.

4 Studies indeed advocate leveraging on this effect to sustainably resolve the global food insecurity crises, since societies may not indefinitely expand cropland without significant environmental risks (Acevedo 2011; Acevedo et al. 2018).

5 These effects are indeed confirmed by the results of a survey of 18 studies by the World Bank and measure the relationship in low-income countries between farmers’ education and their agricultural efficiency (as measured by crop production), which reported an average 8.7% increased productivity for farmers with four years of elementary education compared to those with no education. The effect is even greater (13%) when complementary inputs are available. Furthermore, farmers with more education showed much higher gains in income from the use of new technologies and adjusted more rapidly to technological changes (Gasperini 2000).