Coping with Food Insecurity on a Micro-Scale: Evidence from Ethiopian Rural Households

Abstract

This article examines the main household demographics and economic factors associated with food insecurity and coping behavior of rural households employed during times of food shortages in northern Ethiopia. Using a cost-of-basic-needs approach we estimated the food poverty line. This cut-off value was used to classify households as either food secure or insecure. Then empirical analyses were used, based on respectively a logit regression model and a coping strategy index. The estimated results revealed that household size, size of farm land, livestock ownership, frequency of extension services, and proximity to basic infrastructures are associated with the food security status of farming households in the study area. Moreover, households relied largely on consumption-based coping strategies when faced with food shortages.

Keywords:

• coping behavior
• cost-of-basic-needs approach
• food insecurity
• household
• logit

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors thank the editor and two anonymous referees for constructive comments and suggestions which have helped to improve the original version of the article. We appreciate the survey households for their willingness to participate in this study. However, the authors alone are responsible for the ideas expressed in the article.

Notes

¹Non-food commodities consumed by households included goods and services periodically procured for household consumption but excluded durable capital assets. They constituted those goods and services on which households incurred recurrent expenditure.

²Poverty in Ethiopia and in northern Ethiopia, Tigray region, in particular is believed to be above 30%. Accordingly, we identified the poorest 30% as a reference household deemed to be typical of the poor.

³ Tsimad is an area of land that can be ploughed by a pair of oxen in a day approximately equal to a quarter of a hectare

⁴Household dependency ratio is determined as the ratio of nonworking age individuals (less than 15 years or older than 64 years) to the working age individuals (15–64 years of age)