Informal associations, shocks, and household food consumption: panel data estimation from rural Nigeria

ABSTRACT

We use the three-waves panel data for households in rural Nigeria from the General Household Surveys (GHS), which is part of the World Bank Living Standards Measurement Study – Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA), to investigate how informal associations help households that are exposed to adverse shocks in smoothing their food consumption. We find that informal associations help to improve the percentage of food expenditure and dietary diversity of households who are members compared to those non-member households. Moreover, we investigate potential mechanisms through which these relationships hold, and we find that households are able to borrow from both the association and other individuals who may be members of similar networks. Our results are robust to different specifications.

KEYWORDS:

• Cooperatives
• informal associations
• Nigeria
• shocks
• rural economy

Acknowledgments

The first version of this paper was presented at the 2019 CSAE conference at Oxford University. Subsequent version was presented at the 2019 ENSEA/CISEA conference at Cote D’Ivoire. The authors are thankful to the organizers for their generous support to participate at the conference. The comments and suggestions from the participants and discussant at these conferences are appreciated. The comments from the anonymous reviewers are also well appreciated. As usual, all other disclaimer applies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at DOI:10.17605/OSF.IO/TPA6U.

Table A1. Shocks on Household Food Consumption (Including Community Covariates).

Notes

1. The 12-food categories is a good indication of household economic access to food compared to an alternative measure that considers only 9-food categories, which reflects the probability of micronutrient adequacy (Kennedy, Ballard, and Dop 2013).

2. Including Gender and age of household head, household dependency ratio, size, asset owned, farmland owned, and income.

3. Enhancing Financial Innovation & Access (2018).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Uchenna Efobi

Uchenna EFOBI holds a PhD from Covenant University with focus on international financial flow, trade, and financial reporting regulation in Africa. He is currently interested in research that focus on development policy, with strong emphasis on econometric modeling.

Scholastica Ngozi Atata

Scholastica Ngozi Atata is a lecturer at Federal University of Agriculture Abeokuta, Nigeria in the Department of Communication and General Studies. She has a PhD in the Department of Sociology from the University of Ibadan, Ibadan Nigeria. Her research interest includes, gender studies, identity, development studies, ethnic, conflict and culture. She has carried out some research works and published in reputable journals. She is a member of the Nigerian Anthropological and Sociological Association (NASA) and International Sociological Association (ISA). She is a recipient of TETFund PhD research grant, Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta staff development scheme, Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa Fellowship from Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and an alumna Brown International Advanced Research Institutes (BIARI)-Ethnicity, Conflict and Inequality institute, Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University, Providence USA.

Joseph Ajefu

Joseph Ajefu is a Research Fellow at SOAS University of London. He holds an MSc in Development Economics from the University of Birmingham and a PhD in Economics from the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom. His research interests are public policy, political economy, climate change and household welfare in low-and-middle-income countries.