EFFECTS OF HEALTH EXPENDITURE ON FOOD SECURITY STATUS OF RURAL HOUSEHOLDS IN OGUN STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

The study assessed the effect of health expenditure on the food security status of rural households in Ogun State, Nigeria. Multistage sampling procedure was used to select 120 rural households in the study area. Data was collected from the respondents with the aid of a semi-structured questionnaire complemented with an interview guide. Descriptive statistics, food security index, cost of illness procedure and binary logit regression model were the analytical techniques used for data analysis. Findings from the study revealed that majority (79.2%) of the respondent were male, married (90.8%), with a mean household size of 5 persons. Also, the mean age of the respondents was found to be 54 years with most of them involved in farming as their major occupation. Findings also revealed that majority of the rural households suffered from various illnesses such as malaria, waist/back pain, fever, high blood pressure, rheumatism and other illnesses with an average estimated cost of illness (₦45, 973.68 per month). The results of the food security status of the rural households revealed that a higher percentage (53.3%) of the rural households were food insecure. Factors found to significantly affect the food security status of the rural households were cost of illness (p<0.1) and other socio-economic variables such as education (p<0.1), income (p<0.05) and sex of the household head (p<0.01). Therefore, this study recommends that government should subsidize the cost of drugs and other medical expenses for poor households particularly those in the rural areas in order to reduce their financial burden on health care and increase their economic access to food.