Abstract
Recent attention has been focused on means of eliminating food insecurity and hunger worldwide. Food security includes three dimensions, viz, availability, access and utilization. In the absence of any of these conditions, it can be considered as food insecurity. The aim of this study was to identify determinants of food insecurity status of rural households in Sri Lanka, using secondary data from a nationally representative sample data-set, the household income and expenditure survey of the Department of Census and Statistics. The analysis was carried out in two stages. In the first stage, the food insecurity index was determined and in the second stage ordered logistic regression model was executed to estimate the food insecurity status of the households as a function of a set of independent variables. The food insecurity index was determined by using a proxy variable based on the percentage of each household’s total expenditures devoted to food. Descriptive statistic results indicated that the percentages of food insecure and secure households were 54% and 46% respectively. The two-sample t-test and proportion test results suggested that there were significant differences of means in human capital variables between food secure and food insecure households. The results of the ordered logistic regression model revealed that if the household head was a female and educated, it would decrease the vulnerability of household to become food insecure, and if a household has a higher number of members who completed the secondary education, higher number of workers, lower young dependents and old dependents, food insecurity status of rural households in Sri Lanka would be reduced. In conclusion, the findings of this study support the empirical literature on the importance of human capital development in food insecurity status.
Highlights
In recently, attention has been focused on means of eliminating food insecurity and hunger worldwide
The variables are helpful to observe significant differences among food insecure and secure-households including household characteristics such as education level of the household head, number of workers, number of young dependents, number of old dependents and number of members in the family who have done Advanced Level (A/L) examination and who are above age 15 (Table 5)
This study examined the determinants of food insecurity in the context of rural households in Sri Lanka
Summary
Attention has been focused on means of eliminating food insecurity and hunger worldwide. Despite the available resources and the efforts made by governments at different times, food insecurity remained one of the most crucial challenges to economic development (Dercon, 2004; Flores et al 2005). The most widespread definition from FAO (2017) is considered as “food that is available to everyone at all times, that they have means of access to it, that it is nutritionally adequate in terms of quantity, quality and variety, and is acceptable within the given culture”. The lack of food security, in other words, food insecurity can occur at different levels: household, regional and national. In the context of Sri Lanka, the Global Hunger Index (GHI) and the Global Food Security Index (GFSI) both rank Sri Lanka poorly in terms of food security (IPS, 2017). Based on the FAO (2017) statistics, the level of calorie deficit in Sri Lanka, 192 Kcal/capita/day on average in 2014-2016, is the highest in South Asia
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