Nothing Compares? Investigating the Cost of Food as a Driver of Urban Unrest

Figures & data

Figure 1. Food price index, South Africa: 2000–2020. Data from FAOSTAT (2015 = 100) (FAOSTAT 2021).

Figure 2. Unrest events in Gauteng: 2014–2021. Data from Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED). Unrest events include demonstrations, including protesters (peaceful) and rioters (violent) (Raleigh and Dowd 2015).

Table 1. Treatment group comparison.

	Freq.	Female (prop)	Age	Annual income	Lived poverty index	Union member (prop)
Stable	165 (27.14%)	0.487 (0.040)	38.2 (1.03)	66,167 (4,917)	0.433 (0.043)	0.084 (0.022)
prices
Fuel price	140 (23.03%)	0.535 (0.044)	35.9 (1.04)	77,953 (7,438)	0.493 (0.051)	0.071 (0.023)
increase
Food price	153 (25.16%)	0.503 (0.042)	37.7 (1.10)	74,023 (6,054)	0.507 (0.048)	0.063 (0.020)
increase
Electricity rate	150 (24.67%)	0.507 (0.042)	35.6 (1.08)	75,212 (8,955)	0.440 (0.041)	0.090 (0.024)
increase

Table 2. Response by treatment group.

	Do nothing	Attend a ward meeting	Engage in a labor strike	Attend a demo	Shut down traffic	Total
Stable	94 (61.4%)	39 (25.5%)	9 (5.9%)	10 (6.5%)	1 (0.7%)	153 (100%)
prices
Fuel price	52 (38.5%)	39 (28.9%)	11 (8.2%)	20 (14.8%)	13 (9.6%)	135 (100%)
increase
Food price	71 (51.8%)	29 (21.2%)	8 (5.8%)	17 (12.4%)	12 (8.8%)	137 (100%)
increase
Electricity rate	57 (40.1%)	51 (35.9%)	4 (2.8%)	12 (8.8%)	15 (10.6%)	142 (100%)
increase
Total	274 (48.3%)	158 (27.9%)	32 (5.64%)	62 (10.9%)	41 (7.23%)	567 (100%)

x²-statistic = 37.56; p = 0.000

Table 3. Multinomial logit regression.

	M1		M2
Attend a local Ward Committee meeting
Fuel price increase	1.808*	(0.515)	1.860*	(0.572)
Food price increase	0.984	(0.287)	1.070	(0.343)
Electricity rate increase	2.157**	(0.585)	2.112*	(0.624)
Engage in a labor strike demanding higher wages
Fuel price increase	2.209	(1.065)	2.387^+	(1.164)
Food price increase	1.177	(0.602)	1.373	(0.707)
Electricity rate increase	0.733	(0.458)	0.725	(0.456)
Attend a demonstration march
Fuel price increase	3.615**	(1.535)	4.019**	(1.809)
Food price increase	2.251^+	(0.965)	2.638*	(1.221)
Electricity rate increase	2.474*	(1.093)	2.471^+	(1.158)
Shut down traffic on local roads
Fuel price increase	23.500**	(24.745)	24.111**	(25.749)
Food price increase	15.887**	(16.738)	17.965**	(19.134)
Electricity rate increase	24.737**	(25.906)	25.740**	(27.533)
Observations	567		567

Exponentiated coefficients reported; standard errors in parentheses; ⁺p < 0.10; *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01. M1: Only treatment conditions as categorical explanatory variables. M2: Controls for enumerator.

Figure 3. Predicted margins by treatment: do nothing vs. do something.

Figure 4. Predicted margins by response: do nothing vs. do something.

Figure 5. Respondent reporting no hunger: do nothing vs. do something.

Figure 6. Respondent reporting hunger: do nothing vs. do something.

FAOSTAT. 2021. “Consumer Price Indices.” Accessed October 10, 21. http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/CP.

 Google Scholar

Raleigh, Clionadh, and Caitriona Dowd. 2015. “Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) Codebook.” https://www.acleddata.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/ACLED_Codebook_2015.pdf.

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