Factors Influencing Household Food Security in West Africa: The Case of Southern Niger

Seydou Zakari, Liu Ying and Baohui Song
Additional contact information
Seydou Zakari: College of Economics and Management, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China
Liu Ying: College of Economics and Management, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China
Baohui Song: College of Agriculture, California State University, Chico, CA 95973, USA

Sustainability, 2014, vol. 6, issue 3, 1-12

Abstract: Food insecurity is a major challenge for Niger and for many African countries. The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors affecting household food security in Niger. Based on survey data covering 500 households, drought, high food prices, poverty, soil infertility, disease and insect attacks are reported by the respondents to be the main causes of food insecurity. The empirical results from logistic regression revealed that the gender of the head of household, diseases and pests, labor supply, flooding, poverty, access to market, the distance away from the main road and food aid are significant factors influencing the odds ratio of a household having enough daily rations. Another important finding is that female headed households are more vulnerable to food insecurity compared to male headed households. The findings of this study provide evidence that food insecurity continues to affect the Nigerien population.

Keywords: food security; household; coping strategies; causes of vulnerability; Niger (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/6/3/1191/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/6/3/1191/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:6:y:2014:i:3:p:1191-1202:d:33715

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().