Apr 13, 2011 - generation through market access, linkages with service and input ..... Table 3: Impact of programs on household dietary diversity (HDD) ...
Social Protection for Redistributive Justice: Socio-economic and Political Drivers of Vulnerability to Food Insecurity in Bangladesh and Ethiopia
Zenebe Bashaw Uraguchi
International Conference: “Social Protection for Social Justice” Institute of Development Studies, UK 13–15 April 2011
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Social Protection for Redistributive Justice: Socio-economic and Political Drivers of Vulnerability to Food Insecurity in Bangladesh and Ethiopia
Paper submitted to the Centre for Social Protection (CSP) Institute of Development Studies (IDS) University of Sussex, Brighton, UK Aril 13-15, 2011
Zenebe Bashaw Uraguchi, Ph.D. International Adviser, Market Development and Livelihoods Swiss Foundation for Development and International Cooperation (Intercooperation)
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Abstract: This paper examines the achievements and shortcomings of rural public resource transfer programs as part of social protection programs (SPPs), which are mainly intended to address food security. The study further extends the discussion by focusing on the potentials and challenges of using the market to complement SPPs to address ‘income poverty’ – income generation through market access, linkages with service and input providers, and improving enabling environment (regulatory frameworks and infrastructure). The study, based on empirical data from five districts of Bangladesh and Ethiopia, shows that rural resource transfer programs served as temporary safety nets for food availability, but they were limited in boosting the dietary diversity of households and their coping mechanisms. Households which participated in the programs increased their supply of food as temporary buffer to seasonal asset depletion in addition to earning highly needed income during slack seasons. However, participation in the programs was marred by inclusion error (food-secure households were included) and exclusion error (food-insecure households were excluded). Income transfer projects alone were not robust determinants of household food security. Rather socio-political variables of education and family size, and economic factors of access to land and participation in non-farm income generating activities were found to be significant in accounting for changes in households’ food security. Rural public resource transfer programs in both countries were essentially temporary safety nets with less systemic impact on addressing redistributive justice for many poor and extreme poor households.
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1.0 Introduction
This paper has two main objectives. First, it examines the achievements and weakness of SPPs undertaken in the form of rural public resource transfer programs in Bangladesh and Ethiopia. While in Bangladesh the programs have been characterized by a mix of cash and in-kind resource transfers, SPPs in Ethiopia, particularly from 2004, have increasingly emphasized cash transfers that complemented or partially displaced the long history of food aid in the country. The programs in Bangladesh include food and cash-for-work (FFW/CFW) programs. The study focuses on earlier food-for-work (FFW) programs and the recent Productive Safety Nets Program (PSNP) in Ethiopia. Based on primary data collected from five districts of the two countries, this study provides accounts of the actual benefits and weakness of SPPs in addressing vulnerability to food insecurity. Second, the study further extends the discussion by focusing on the potentials and challenges of using the market to complement SPPs by addressing ‘income poverty’ – income generation through market access, linkages with service and input providers, and improving enabling environment. The study builds on ongoing project in ‘Making Markets Work for the Poor’ (M4P) in Bangladesh.1 It attempts to introduce potentially ‘innovative’ ways of making SPPs avoid dependency on external assistance, and building the resilience and autonomy for vulnerable rural households, particularly small-scale producers and women. In fact, lack of access to markets (information and finance) and institutional limitations (weak organization or collective action, quality service provision, and unfavorable enabling environment) are as equally inhibiting to the rural poor from gaining potential benefits (win-win market gains) as the failure of the market. While it is possible to cushion risks and consequences of market failure through dynamic and innovative SPPs, this paper recognizes that the market in general and 1
The data comes from Samriddhi project. Samriddhi is a multi-year project funded by Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and implemented by Intercooperation, Swiss Foundation for Development and International Cooperation. The opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of SDC or Intercooperation. Many thanks to Felix Bachmann, Azmul Huda and Marcus Jenal. All errors are mine and mine alone.
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agricultural markets in particular are embedded in social fabrics that the poor highly depend for their livelihoods – selling their produce and labor, and buying other products and services. Understanding SPPs depends on the socio-economic and political structures of different societies and how members of the societies approach and receive SPPs. One component of SPPs is ‘public measures to provide income security’ to different beneficiaries at the individual, household or community level (Holzmann et al., 2003). SPPs have the potential of contributing to social justice and equity, and promoting declining traditional and informal methods of livelihoods security in poor agrarian societies (Conway and Foster, 2001). They are built on initiatives that have been at the forefront of welfare states in developed countries, and have for long been regarded too unaffordable to implement, or as luxury programs in low-income agrarian societies. There were also concerns in weakening informal resource transfers and dissipating expenditures towards other development strategies (Adato and Hoddinott, 2008). Inclusive, adaptive and sustainable SPPs need to address underlying socio-economic and political processes that produce redistributive injustice and inequality. This is because the root causes of vulnerability, in agrarian developing countries such as Bangladesh and Ethiopia, lie in skewed development policies that accrued benefits to the few while marginalizing large segments of the poor. This is also exacerbated by rapidly changing climate shocks and stresses and weakened resilience of the poorest and most vulnerable people. Vulnerability mitigation, reduction and coping mechanisms require initiatives directed towards designing and implementing SPPs that successfully and amicably incorporate informal, market and public approaches and stakeholders. This is particularly important in approaches that aim to tackle one of the most serious and critical problems of food insecurity – from supply to entitlements, consumption and resilience through asset (re)creation and adaptation skills. One strategies devised as temporary welfare net of vulnerability to food insecurity is rural resource transfer and employment projects. They are known by different names as rural public works (RPW), employment generation schemes (EGS), income generation schemes (IGS), rural employment guarantee schemes (REGS), public employment schemes (PES), food-forwork programs (FFW), productive safety net programs (PSNP) and so on. They aim to transfer 4|Page
income in the form of cash, in-kind payment, commodities and credits, as well as provide public goods through possible multiplier effects. This study is significant because it cuts-across issues of governance, core drivers of vulnerability, and evidence-based accounts of the potentials and drawbacks of SPPs within the redistributive justice debate – either from need-based or rights-based perspective. The study has relevance not only in enriching the theoretical discussions, but empirically it also generates ideas and issues to address some of the ongoing debates. In addition, the focus on social protection and food security, due to increasing vulnerability from climate change and socioeconomic instability (e.g. food price hikes and financial crisis), is relevant and timely as the problem of food insecurity is by far a more deadly and profound problem. Finally, the cross-national nature of the study may sensitize local governments, the private sector, the donor community, civil society/local and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to reassess their initiatives in their programs for sustainable and efficient SPPs. This is highly needed because for countries and rural communities with unstable macroeconomic conditions and fragile socio-economic base, food security challenges such as global food price hikes easily affect and limit options, consequently eroding assets for coping the impacts. Protracted problems of unemployment, limited political space/participation in resource distribution, rural-urban migration, frequent disasters and slow recovery efforts and others add to social fragmentation and political instabilities.
2.0 SPPs, Redistributive Justice and Institutions SPPs emerged as a response to rising poverty and vulnerability in the 1980s and 1990s. The programs sought to address the increasing gap between the poor and the rich through integrating distributive justice into pure economic thinking. This has for long been debated among thinkers such as Aristotle and Hume. Contemporary philosophers like John Rawls (1999: 54) believe that increased societal fragmentation is the result of sustained distributive injustice and unfairness in income, wealth and opportunity.
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Mainstream economic growth theory bases the distribution of incomes between the poor and the rich on the Kuznets curve. For example, during most of the 1950s and 1960s, it was assumed that gradual economic growth was best suited for bridging the inequality gap through trickle down, i.e., if the horse has better hay to eat, the birds will eat better. By reducing the role of the state, the trickle down approach assumed that it would increase savings that could be redistributed and sustained. The strategy would allow new hands who would invest in new or inventive ways, thereby diversifying means for income rather than buying or investing in durable goods that do not generate wealth. Contrary to mainstream growth theory, high inequality is not limited to the early periods of economic growth. According to Amartya Sen (1987: 7, 9), ‘the nature of modern economics has been substantially impoverished by the distance that has grown between economics and ethics … *and economics+ can be more productive by paying greater and more explicit attention to the ethical considerations that shape human behavior and judgment.” Evan Luard (1990: 7) adds that inequalities ‘as glaring as any which have existed in any earlier time continue to exist. But the inequality of today…is globalized.’ Rising inequality between the poor and the rich is an issue that is ‘indeed shocking and cannot meet any plausible test of legitimacy’ (Wade, 2001: 37). It thus should not be ignored contrary to what Ayn Rand (1966) advised us to never mind the suffering of the poor, for capitalism did not create inequality but inherited it. This paper argues that addressing distributive injustice should start with examining how institutions – the state, the market (private sector), and non-governmental organizations/civil society (the Third Sector) – function in a country. This is because distributive injustice is a ‘consequence of how they [institutions] are combined together into a single system (Rawls, 1999: 50). Specifically, the trajectories of institutional development, both formal and informal, in Bangladesh and Ethiopia show that the different patterns of relationships and roles between and among the state, the market and NGOs/civil society lacked cooperative linkages conducive to their smooth functions and responsibilities to efficiently use opportunities and available resources. Institutional development has been dominated by strong elites who control weak institutions and negotiate among themselves. This contributes to inefficient institutional system 6|Page
to address distributive injustice that isolates large number of poor and extreme poor sections of the societies who are not part of influencing or having a say in ‘who gets what when and how’. With the risk of oversimplification, resource acquisition and (re)distribution in Bangladesh and Ethiopia is conducted with rent seeking behavior of elites of core institutions. Strong elites in weak institutions claim their share, which inhibits growth and aggravates inequality. Rent seeking behavior is one factor in diseconomies of scale. It accumulates wealth for the few and disperses costs and poverty for the majority. This was widely discussed in the theory of public choice as well as trade theory and new political economy. Figure 1 shows the different patterns and roles of the main institutions in Bangladesh and Ethiopia. Successive institutions of the First Sector in Ethiopia have been ‘hard states’ that set the agenda for the private sector – through controlling/limiting its activities in addition to being part of managing/running it. State institutions in Bangladesh have displayed a struggle between tradition and transition. The political system appears to be still at its traditional stage, very nostalgic to those who were actively involved in the liberation war and which, for different reasons (some of which are positive as part of the history) have grown to build excessive political invincibility/aura around some past figures for the purpose of invoking legitimacy to leadership – both personal and group. The private sector or major lead firms, with high connections or management staff from retired military officers and former powerful politicians, appear to have high influence on government policies for lucrative business (field interviews, 2008-2009). Similar to Bangladesh (e.g., garment and other small-scale industries) the private sector in Ethiopia (e.g., agricultural investment and small-scale industries) also sees important roles in emerging business opportunities, despite unfair competition from parastatals. The Third Sector serves as a ‘conduit’ in Ethiopia for highly needed aid as a resource, but the activities of ‘independent’ NGOs are closely monitored. Such limited political space creates Samaritan's dilemma for major donors: a condition where donors attempt to hold back aid to recipients that they thought do not have conducive policy/political framework, but face the dilemma regarding the impacts that donors’ actions will have on the poor. The state in Bangladesh is dependent on foreign aid, which appears to be allocated with a mix of using aid 7|Page
as an exogenous means in stimulating economic growth and the role of good governance and ‘project ownership’ as prerequisites for the success of aid allocation.
Figure 1: Patterns of institutional relationships in Bangladesh and Ethiopia
The First Sector in Bangladesh has also loose partnership with NGOs, creating – intentionally or otherwise – an environment for their proliferation and ‘ineffective’ controlling mechanism. This was the case during the 1980s and early 1990s in Ethiopia. Many of the NGOs originated by default, i.e., due to the weakness of state institutions to reach the poor, even though the contributions of many NGOs in Bangladesh are questioned (Lewis, 1993; Hashemi, 1995). There is an emerging trend among some international and local NGOs which are attempting to introduce innovative and sustainable interventions to address problems of access to resources and benefits by the poor. This is largely absent in Ethiopia, where the current government has introduced very stringent control over the activities of NGOs, which are very 8|Page
critical of the system (Bashaw, 2001; Mulat, 2009). Such unbalanced and subtle modalities of relationships between and among the various institutions in Bangladesh and Ethiopia breed ‘uncontrolled institutions [and elites] of justice, sharing, and solidarity, mak[ing] the strong stronger and the weak weaker” (Ward , 1976: xii).
3.0 Background to Rural Public Resource Transfer Programs in Bangladesh and Ethiopia Bangladesh and Ethiopia are probably best known internationally for poverty, images of starving/malnourished children, and a series of appeals for help from the international community. This paper does not seek to dispel such pervasive and deep-ingrained perceptions, nor does it intend to compare rural public resource transfer programs in the two countries. Both countries have underlying historical, geographical, and socio-economic differences; yet, there are some important similarities in the nature, trajectories and scopes of the challenges faced by rural communities, particularly poor and extreme poor households (Uraguchi, 2009; 2010). There are a number of SPPs and different experiences in the two countries. For example, a study in Bangladesh indentified as many as 27 types of SPPs, even though the share of public expenditure (4.4%) showed gradual decline, consisting only 1% of GDP (World Bank, 2006). In the Ethiopian case, the country has long history of social protection practices – ranging from pension system to self-help institutions (Idir – funeral association for mutual support, Iqib – rotating saving and credit group) and large-scale public resource transfer programs. But seen from the agricultural sector which is the most important source of livelihoods to more than 85% of the population, social protection has become the ‘mirror image’ of the agricultural sector: ‘the more effectively farming fills household granaries, the smaller the annual appeal for humanitarian assistance’ (Devereux and Guenther, 2007: 3). The FFW program in Bangladesh started in 1975 funded by external donors. It declined at the end of the 1990s before regaining importance since 2000s as one part of rural development interventions. The program was used as means to create employment and supply 9|Page
of food items to poor households. After the 1998 floods, the Vulnerable Group Feeding (VGF) program was introduced, which distributed cards that entitled beneficiaries to monthly food aid. The VGF was scaled up to include households hit by the 2007 Sidr (cyclones) paying 15 kilograms of rice per month and small-scale cash-for-work projects were undertaken targeting disaster victims and female-headed households. The FFW program in Bangladesh, mainly funded by the World Food Program (WFP) and US food aid Public Law (PL) 480, was undertaken through labor-intensive activities of earthwork construction involving rural road construction, re-excavation of channels, and maintenance of river embankments. The program was built on the Village-Aid Program (V-Aid) that started in 1952 and phased-out ten years later in 1962. The FFW program supported mainly landless poor households with no alternative source of income during slack season (monga). During the 1970s, the program accounted for 4% - 5% of resources allocated to development interventions in the country (Hossain and Akash, 1993). At the early stages of the program, participants received imported wheat which gradually incorporated rice. The history of the FFW program in Ethiopia also dates back to the beginning of the 1970s through funding from the US food aid Public Law (PL) 480. Conservation activities and smallscale road constructions were undertaken in the then Eritrea, Tigray and Wollo provinces (Rahmato, 2003: 213-214). These were later expanded to bigger projects when the World Food Program (WFP) (Project 2488) started one of the largest interventions in Africa. The FFW programs in the two countries coincided with major socio-economic and political changes. First, both Bangladesh and Ethiopia were hit by one of the worst famines in the 1970s and disaster in early 1980s. There was a belief that directing aid to areas that mainly accounted for the cyclical famine (Ethiopia) and disasters (floods and cyclones in Bangladesh) would be more pertinent than simple relief handouts. Second, the programs were used as political tools in controlling rural politics, mobilizing rural communities and buying allegiance. In Bangladesh, the extensive Public Food Distribution System (PFDS) was dominated by state enterprises that controlled local politics through strong local elites (Siamwalla, 2001: 236). The Marxist state (1974-1991) in Ethiopia used the FFW program to counter armed oppositions operating in rural areas. The ‘Land to the Tiller’ dictum necessitated visible and long-lasting 10 | P a g e
projects specifically targeting highly food-insecure regions, which was an attempt to underscore a departure from the feudo-monarchial regime of Haile Selassie I (1930-1974). Since 2002 the FFW program in Bangladesh has been integrated into rural infrastructure development program. The Ministry of Food and Disaster Management allocates the fund for FFW program and the Local Government Engineering Department (LGED) of the Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Co-operatives (MLGRDC) is the main implementing agency. Most of the activities under the FFW program take place during the dry season even though there are also small-scale activities (e.g., cleaning ponds and repairing schools and mosques) designed during the rainy season under the Test Relief (TR). The last phase of the FFW program in Ethiopia was implemented after the fall of the Marxist state in 1991. The program was accompanied by the employment generation scheme (EGS) in selected Weredas (sub-districts) of the country until 2003/4. The overall structure of the program was built on the National Food Security Strategy (NFSS) of the country that was issued in 1996. Beneficiaries received three kilograms of cereals (mainly wheat) and 12 grams oil, and the payment was calculated with reference to the standard set by the WFP in the 1970s. This was intended to cover the daily subsistence of a household with six members by supplying 1, 800 Kcal per person per day. The Food Security Vulnerable Group Development (FSVGD) in Bangladesh is one of the two components of the Vulnerable Group Development (VGD), the other being the Income Generation Vulnerable Group Development (IGVGD). The program was initially designed as a relief intervention in the mid-1970s and it has evolved over time to encompass development objectives. In the FSVGD, participants receive 15 kg of fortified wheat flour (atta) and Taka 150 (US 1= 70 Taka) per month. The WFP has been the major donor of the FSVGD, and line ministries primarily implement the program (from selection of participants to distribution). The program specifically targets beneficiaries with the ultimate goal of bringing ‘sustainable improvement to the lives of members of ultra-poor households’ (WFP, 2007: 1). The Productive Safety Net Programs (PSNPs) that started in 2004 in Ethiopia is a product of two underlying factors. On the one hand, there is a resource-constrained domestic leadership with a desire to demonstrate to rural communities that shouldered two decades of 11 | P a g e
war and its critics that there is real political willingness. On the other hand, external donors, aid agencies and activists appear committed to long-term multi-annual financing, but with some conditions (that include participation in projects, the modalities of aid, and additional reforms). The PSNPs, the biggest in Africa, are defined as mechanisms that transfer resources and particularly cash to food-insecure population in Weredas (sub-districts) chronically affected in ‘a way that prevents asset depletion at the household level and creates assets at the community level’. The programs have two components of public works and direct support (mainly for people with disabilities, widows and female-headed households). The main activities undertaken include water harvesting, irrigation, feeder roads, reclamation and rehabilitation of grazing land, agro-forestry, livestock activities and resettlement. Final decision is made by Weredas in line with their needs. Activities in principle should take place on public lands.
4.0 Roles and Limitations of Rural Public Transfer Programs in Food Security in Bangladesh and Ethiopia 4.1 The surveys A total of 1,000 households both in Bangladesh and Ethiopia were part of this study. The surveys in Bangladesh covered 350 households in three regions of Gangachara, in Rangpur district; Saturia, in Manikganj district; and Sharon Khola, in Bagerhat district. In Ethiopia, 650 households in Kalu, in south Wello, and Astbi Wonberta, in eastern Tigray, were selected. The surveys were conducted with frequent visits to the sites. Longitudinal structured questionnaires, interviews with key informants, group discussions and observations were used to elicit information. In the absence of truly experimental results, employing quasi-social experiments can be used to understand the impacts of rural resource transfer programs. Conventionally, using before-after comparison is the best available method to appreciate the impacts of the interventions on treated group against control (comparison) group. However, the method can be misleading since it may reflect all the possible changes over the period of the intervention. These changes may be related to the impact of the intervention, or unrelated temporal events. 12 | P a g e
One way of minimizing this bias is randomizing samples into treatment and control (comparison) groups. The latter is used as implied counterfactual. For the design to be plausible, data both on the level of food security and other determinants should exist for the two groups before and after the project. The difference between the treatment group (in this case household targeted by the programs) and control group is assumed to be fixed/constant, or it follows parallel paths over time. As suggested by Heckman et al. (1997), for the ith targeted (treated) and non-targeted (control) households, the change in the outcome is measured by:
[HHia - HHib ︳Pia = 1]
(1.0)
[HHia - HHib ︳Pia = 0]
(1.1)
where HH indicates households, a after the program and b before. P shows for targeted (1) and non-targeted (0) households. Therefore, difference-in-difference (DID) measures: [HHia - HHib ︳Pia = 1] - [HHia - HHib ︳Pia = 0]
(1.2)
In the research sites, targeted and non-targeted households are assumed to display general fixed traits which can be denoted by Φ and a drift term δt. The condition before and after the programs can be shown: HHit, 0 = Φi + δt + εit
(1.3)
HHit, 1 = HHit, 0 + a
(1.4)
This follows: HHit = (1 - Pit) HHit, 0 + Pit HHit, 1
(1.5)
= Φi + δt + a Pit + εit 13 | P a g e
where t = a, b. The average effect of targeted households is estimated as:
a = E [HHia - HHib ︳Pia = 1] - [HHia - HHib ︳Pia = 0]
(1.6)
= {E [HHia ︳Pia = 1] - [HHia ︳Pia = 0]} - {E [HHib ︳Pia = 1] - [HHib ︳Pia = 0]} The validity of the DID approach is beset by two challenges. First, pre-targeting can be influenced by transitory shocks on households (or Ashenfelter’s dip). For example, the programs, in principle, intend to target households with worse food security levels. This may make comparison with the control group difficult. However, there are also both exclusion and inclusion errors, and therefore not all households targeted or otherwise are in worse food security level. This is not believed to have compromised the reliability of the measurement since the purpose is to understand whether the programs account for positive changes of food security level of households.
4.2 Assessment of Rural Public Transfer Programs The contributions of rural public transfer programs on the food security of selected households in Bangladesh and Ethiopia are assessed based on household food supply, household dietary diversity (HDD) and coping mechanism index (CMI). The study also introduced sociodemographic factors (family size, gender, and education), agricultural inputs (land size, water access, cattle ownership, and fertilizer use), and economic factor (credit access) to assess their impacts on HDD and CSI. Table 1 shows descriptive statistics and definition of variables by program types in Bangladesh and Ethiopia.
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Table 1: Variables definition and descriptive statistics (n= 1,000)
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Household Food Supply Participation in the different programs showed increased access to food supply for consumption compared to the baseline data (Table 2). This was clear in supply of cereals (rice and wheat), and the changes were more consistent than non-participating households. In other food groups too there were consistent and positive changes, even though these changes were very minimal especially in animal protein (beef, goat/sheep, chicken, milk, and egg). The majority of the households (76%) in Bangladesh and (64%) in Ethiopia stated that increased supply of food was due to additional income from the programs. In all five districts of Bangladesh and Ethiopia, more than two-third of the households responded that they spent their income on food. In terms of preference of payment, 55% of the households in Bangladesh and 59% in Ethiopia preferred food to cash.
Table 2: Change in additional food supply for consumption of households (average %)
NPHHs: non-participating households 16 | P a g e
Household Dietary Diversity (HDD) Studies in a number of countries documented the contribution and relevance of HDD as an important indicator of food security. Some of these include Hatloy et al. (1998) in Mali, Hoddinott and Yohannes (2002) in 10 developing countries, Ogle et al. (2001) in Vietnam, Brown et al. (2002) in Guatemala, Onyango (2003) in Sub-Saharan Africa, Clausen et al. (2002) in Botswana, Kennedy et al. (2005) in Bangladesh, Mirmiran et al. (2006) in Iran, Dixon et al. (2006) in Thailand, and Ekesa et al. (2009) in Kenya. Following Berry (1971), the HDD is computed as: HDD = 1 – (a1/A)2 + (a2/A)2 + ….. + (an/A)2 (1.7)
where aj indicates individual food consumption expenditure while A refers to the total consumption expenditure of the household. Household diversification index (HDD) is always between zero and unity, and zero indicates no diversification. HDD increases as the ratio approaches unity. The measurement excluded consumption during special holidays (e.g. fasting/tsom/ramadan and celebrations such as Christmas, eid, durga puja) The reliability and accuracy of HDD has been questioned due to certain limitations. First, there are no universally accepted standards as to what type of main food groups or food types to be used. Second, due to the emphasis given to diversity, HDD has the risk of downplaying how much households are consuming, which can be an important indicator of access to food. Third, HDD shows changes in dietary energy consumption of households, but it has not been easy to empirically show the significance of HDD in nutrient adequacy. A number of research studies employed cut-off points based on sensitivity/specificity analysis as well as Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves (Hatloy et al., 1998; 2000; Hoddinott and Yohannes, 2002; Rue, 2003). The impacts of the programs on the HDD showed education, family size, access to agricultural land and non-farm income activities were statistically significant. There is a 17 | P a g e
consensus in the literature that some level of parental education is positively correlated to the food security status of household’s members. However, the results pointing which parent plays greater role and what level of education yields better outcome are mixed. Demographic characteristics of a household directly affect the availability and consumption of food. Teklu and Johnson (1988) found in Indonesia that an increase in household size led to the reallocation of resources from relatively high-priced/luxurious food items to staples. For Deaton and Paxson (1998), at equal per capita resources, households with large family size are expected to benefit more from shared household public goods, which, in turn, make these households have higher per capita consumption of private goods such as food. Nothing is more important in a society where farmers make up the overwhelming majority than the availability of productive land, and this was shown in the statistical significant values for all types of the programs. Non-farm income comes under the rubric of income diversification. It can be ‘risk management strategy’ that rural households adopt to overcome, for example, a stress (push factor or survival-led strategy). It can also serve as a means to efficiently increase the returns to available capital and labor (pull factor or opportunity-led strategy). The impact of non-farm income on the food security of rural households has been ambiguous. A study of 11 rural households in Latin America presented evidence that non-farm income increased for the past three decades that constituted 40% of the total incomes of rural households in the region (Reardon et al. 2001). In the Philippines Estudillo et al. (2006) showed the increase in non-farm income contributed to the fall in the proportion of poor households from 50% to 31% among farm households, and 63% to 24% among landless households.
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Table 3: Impact of programs on household dietary diversity (HDD) (sample size = 1,000)
Coping Mechanism Index (CMI) CMI measures severity and frequency. The severity is ranked (from 1-11 both in Bangladesh and Ethiopia) based on participant households’ response. It indicates the sum of the scores of the mean multiplied by the corresponding value of the severity from 1-11. Adopting a coping mechanism or set of mechanisms often occurs in a process. The mechanisms differ from countries to countries as well as from regions to regions and households depending on the availability of alternatives. Coping mechanisms of rural households can be classified as shortterm or seasonal mechanisms where households regain or replenish their assets during postshock period, and mechanisms that have protracted/structural impacts and substantially erode 19 | P a g e
assets which are difficult to regain. They indicate frequency and severity, signalling how often a mechanism is employed and how serious the level of the food insecurity is, respectively. Yet, seasonal CMI is bedevilled by the challenge that some food items which are consumed by foodinsecure households may also be eaten by households with better food security status, because they just prefer or like the taste. Even though there is a need to substantial this with further research, this was less likely the case in the research sites of this study due to some sociocultural factors.
Table 4: List of coping mechanisms and their rank by households (seasonal)
Assessing the contribution of the programs to seasonal coping mechanism of households was done by looking into the extent the programs helped households adopt lower coping mechanisms. Comparing the seasonal coping mechanism of targeted and non-targeted households showed similar results (in addition to credit and cattle ownership) as found in the impacts of the programs on HDD (Table 3). Highly food-insecure households with an average of 119 and above CMI experienced lower HDD (0.0 to 0.65) and calorie intakes (
