Relationship between Poverty and Food Security: Empirical Evidence from the Enclave Area of Rural Bangladesh

Abstract

The article examines the relationship between poverty and food insecurity using a primary sample ( n = 319) collected from the enclave areas of Bangladesh. The study reveals that among the poor respondents, 80% are food insecure and among the non-poor respondents 30.8% are food insecure. Uni-variate probit regressions find that per capita income, household size, number of earners, household’s head education, improved communication, suffering from disease, livestock rearing, fishing, improved crop variety, micro-credit, social safety net programme and income shock cause differential influence on poverty and food insecurity simultaneously. Marginal probability of bi-variate probit model illustrates that per capita income, household size and suffering from disease are the three most prominent factors of poverty and food insecurity concurrently that varies at individual factor level from composite factor level. The average predicted probability indicates that majority of the households are more likely to stay poor and food insecure. There is a strong and complex link between poverty and food insecurity, while some poor are food insecure and some are not. Hence, policies devised based on only one indicator may not achieve the development targets fully and resource allocation may be inefficient. The study recommends that there should be synergies between policies which should address both the social indicators jointly.