6. Food security, income distribution and growth in Sudan: some preliminary findings

Abstract

The association of food security with income levels and the relationship of food security to economic variables and policies particularly those that affect income distribution and growth are examined. The results are based on a Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) multiplier analysis. Food-security issues were explored by using the simplest demand-based multiplier analysis based on the only available but out-of-date SAM. The 1978-79 SAM data base for Sudan was modified to include a disaggregation of sorghum into modern and traditional dura for the source of the SAM. There was no easy way in which the urban and rural income groups shown in the SAM could be associated with food insecurity. It was estimated that 40% of the population in Sudan is poor and food-insecure. Food insecurity could be linked to income levels through the data provided by the Household Income and Expenditure Survey for the years 1978-80. Another result from the multiplier analysis was the impact of activity injections on household income. Equivalent injections into the economy through additional investment or additional net exports or other sources of exogenous final demand had much more powerful income multiplier effects in the traditional agricultural sectors particularly livestock and forestry than in the industrial and nontraded sectors. Additionally the highest absolute values of the income multipliers for the traditional agricultural and the labor-intensive non traded activities were for rural households with less than S-9000/year income measured in 1986-87 prices covering most of the food-insecure groups in the rural areas. The results provide an independent quantification of some of the major structural relationships affecting growth income distribution and food security in Sudan within the constraints of the data and the assumptions of the multiplier model.