Households' food security status and its determinants in the North-Central Nigeria

Abstract

Study on household food security is very essential now that Nigeria is currently facing the problem of food crisis. This study presents findings on household food security in the North Central Nigeria (NCN). The first objective was to review and highlight the commonly used measures of households' food security with their pros and cons; second, to determine the food security status of households; and third, to analyse the determinants of household food security status in the study area. This study employed a well-structured questionnaire to obtain data from a cross-sectional survey of 396 households selected from Kwara and Kogi States of NCN with a multi-stage sampling technique. To analyse the data, descriptive statistics and multivariate-ordered logit analyses were used. The descriptive results revealed that only 16% of the households were food secure (FS), 36% food insecure without hunger, 28% FS with moderate hunger and 21% food insecure with severe hunger. The results from the ordered logit revealed that geographical location, marital status, gender of the household head, household size, food dietary diversity, total household expenditure, level of education, occupation of household head, household dependency ratio, social capital and agricultural land-holding size significantly affect households food security status. To transit from food insecure to FS, birth control, participation in agriculture, gender-sensitive food insecurity alleviation policies that enhance endowments of female-headed households are imperative.

Keywords:

• Household
• food security status
• ordered logit
• Rasch model
• North-Central Nigeria