Abstract: Even though there is long-held belief that urban populations are better off, or even favoured than rural populations, the recent food and financial crises have highlighted the problem of urban food insecurity in developing countries. The problem of urban food insecurity in Somaliland has received little attention despite its increasing importance and far reaching ramifications. Hence, the overall objective of this study was to examine the determinants and dimensions of food insecurity risks among urban households in Hargeisa city. To do so, both descriptive statistics and econometric analysis were employed. Descriptive statistics used Foster, Greer and Thorbeck distributional measure of food insecurity while econometric analysis used binary logistic regression model to analyze the data of a set of socio-economic variables as explanatory variables and food insecurity as independent variable. The head count index shows that 53.2 % of the total households are below the food insecurity line. The food insecurity gap and severity were 18.9 % and 6.4 %, respectively. The result of the logistic regression model estimate indicates that out of the 11 factors included, 5 were found to have a significant influence on the probability of being food insecure at less than 1 % significance level. The variables considered were household size, owning saving account, household head education, and access to remittance and gifts and average monthly income of households. Efforts should be made to improve income earning capacity of households, their education level with particular focus on vocational training, reduce household size with a view to reducing their dependency ratio and access of financial services to the needy and trained people needs to be provided with proper targeting standard.
Keywords: Food, Food insecurity, Probability of being food insecure, Severity, urban.
Title: Determinants and Dimensions of Household Food Insecurity Risks in Hargeisa City, Somaliland
Author: Hamda Abdullah
International Journal of Social Science and Humanities Research
ISSN 2348-3156 (Print), ISSN 2348-3164 (online)
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