Socio-economic determinants of food insecurity in Pakistan using PSLM data

Abstract

The study investigates the determinants of household food insecurity for general and farmer households of Pakistan. It is based on the 2007-08 Pakistan Social and Living standard Measurement (PSLM) survey conducted by the Federal Bureau of Statistics, Pakistan. The descriptive results reveal that 50.4% of general and 39.5% of farmer households found to be food insecure. The main objective of this study is to investigate the determinants of household food insecurity using logistic regression. The model is initially fitted with 16 (for general) and 19 (for farmer households) variables, selected from factors identified by previous researchers that affect food insecurity. Twelve out of 19 variables for farmer households are found to be significant such as household size, household size square, annual income, agricultural income, number of rooms, dependency ratio, electricity connection, irrigation availability, age and age square of household head. While only female education variable is found insignificant for general household model. The results obtained are further analyzed to compute partial effects on continuous variables and change in the probabilities on discrete variables for the significant factors in the logistic models. Household size, education of household head, annual income and agricultural income are found to be some important factors influencing the household’s food insecurity status.