STAARS-005 Diversify more or less? Household resilience and food security in rural Nigeria

Abstract

We provide new findings of rural livelihood diversification in Nigeria, using panel data from the Living Standards Measurement Study - Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA). The causes and consequences of livelihood diversification on rural smallholders adopting this strategy have been analysed largely in previous studies using cross sectional data and a narrow definition of food security. In some cases, analysis has been conducted in the absence of shock experiences. We find that some results about the determinants of income diversification in cross sectional analysis also hold in the panel data setting, while others are only revealed due to the panel nature of the data set. We find the relationship between wealth and income diversification in rural Nigeria is best categorized as upward sloping with diminishing marginal effect rather than an inverted U shape or U shape found in previous studies. We also find that income diversification favours food accessibility, food availability, and food utilisation, and therefore resilience capacities overall. We do not find any evidence of income diversification in mitigating or aggravating the impact of shocks, as shock experiences appear to negatively affect food security in spite of income diversification.

Members

Project leader: SENAKPON FIDELE ANGE DEDEHOUANOU

Project researchers:

Journal publication

Authors	Co-Authors	Title of paper	Title of Economic Review	Bibliographic references
Sènakpon F.A. Dedehouanou	John Peak	Diversify More or Less? Household Income Generation Strategies and Food Security in Rural Nigeria	The Journal of Development Studies	Volume 56, 2020, Issue 3 pp 560-577

Working Papers

	Title	Modified	Size	Comments	Recommendations
	Diversify more or less? Household resilience and food security in rural Nigeria	2018-01-31	941.43kB	0	0

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