Income diversification and food security:evidence from Burkina Faso

While food insecurity is a significant public health issue, addressing it is hampered by the fact that there exists substantial variation in food security across households conditional on economic resources. Food insecurity has attracted much attention from policy makers in developing world as well as in Burkina Faso, however it remains a veritable challenge. Accounting for potential endogeneity of income diversification, an IV Probit and IV Poisson models using control function approach explore the relationship of income diversification and food security status of households in Burkina Faso. We also state mean Decomposition to examine the differential of food consumption score by agro-ecological zones. We used nationally representative data from Harmonized Household Living Conditions Survey (HHLCS) over 6,010 households. The findings revealed that about 21% of households are food insecure. We find also that increases in income diversification is positively associated with household food consumption score, household dietary diversity and household food expenditure share meaning that household’s livelihood diversification is considered as household ‘resilience tool and is very relevant to improve the household’s food security status. In addition, the age of the household head, the marital status and education level, the household size, the existence of permanent market, agricultural cooperative and women group in the community are important socio-economic variables in determining food security status in this study. According to findings, there exists differences in food consumption across the agro-ecological zones and between rural and urban households. These results suggest expanding income source opportunities is likely to enhance household diet diversity in Burkina Faso, while making progress towards other social and development goals. However, it is also necessary to push consumption patterns in some zones through climate resilience, infrastructures improvement (roads and transportation costs) and through commodities price control.