- Title
- Poverty, Food insecurity and livelihood diversification among households in Eastern Cape province, South Africa
- Creator
- Megbowon, Ebenezer Toyin
- Subject
- Food supply -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape Poverty -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape Households -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape
- Date Issued
- 2017
- Date
- 2017
- Type
- Thesis
- Type
- Doctoral
- Type
- PhD
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10353/13086
- Identifier
- vital:39464
- Description
- Livelihood diversification have been thought to be a rural issue where agriculture is the main source of income, however in an era of dwindling global and national economic situations, livelihood diversification have been seen to be prominent among urban dwellers as well although literatures have focused more on rural households. There is also a growing evidence in literature showing that livelihood diversification is indispensable for improving household welfare. This study adopts the sustainable livelihood framework to investigate the pattern and determinants of livelihood diversification (number of income sources) and the welfare (poverty and food insecurity) effect of livelihood diversification on household in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Indicators of poverty and food security were computed using Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) and FANTA’s Household Dietary Diversity Scores (HDDS). The study relied on data obtained from the Nation-wide annual General household Survey carried out in 2014 having 3033 households sampled from the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Poisson regression, Tobit regression and logistic regression models. The result of the Multidimensional Poverty Index headcount revealed that while majority (71.28 percent) of the households are not multidimensionaly poor, 20.51 percent, 6.89 percent and 1.32 percent are vulnerable to multidimensional poverty, multidimensionaly poor and severely multidimensionaly poor respectively. The study also revealed that while there is a significant differences between multidimensional poverty status in the both rural and urban area, there is no much differences when considering the gender of the household head. This indicates that poverty is still a rural phenomenon in the Province. Furthermore, the largest contributor (dimension and indicators) to household multidimensional poverty in the Province is standard of living dimension and specific indicator are the fuels use for cooking, water and space heating, toilet system, dwelling and asset accumulation are the most areas of highest deprivation. The household dietary diversity score show that household have a diverse diet with a mean score of 6.9; however the diversity is skewed toward food groups that do not give expected nutritional diets for a healthy and an economically active life. In General pulse diet and vegetables (spinach and wild green leaves) are least consumed in the province. Consumption of fruit is shown to be less consumed in the rural area as compared to the urban area. Descriptive analysis of livelihood diversification among households in the province revealed that majority of households are not diversified. Poisson regression estimate produced a good fit shown by the statistical insignificance of the deviance good of fit (p=1.09). Age of household head, population group of the head, education attainment of the head, engagement in agriculture, recipient of remittance and number of economic active member of the household) were found to be statistically significant (p<0.01) and were found to influence the probability of a household diversifying their livelihood base in the study area. The result of the Tobit regression on effect of livelihood diversification and other household socio-economic characteristics on household poverty suggest livelihood diversification has no statistically significant effect on the probability of being poor in the study area. Other variables found to influence poverty are, household head’s gender (male), age, education, employment status, access to electricity, engagement in agriculture, salary earning, economic active size of household and asset score) were found to be significantly (p<0.01) to influencing multidimensional poverty of the poor households. The result of the logistic regression indicates that livelihood diversification has no significant effect on the probability of a household being poor. Gender of head, age of household head, education attainment of the head, access to electricity, engagement in agriculture, recipients of pension, number of economic active and living in urban area were also found to be statistically significant in influencing household food insecurity in the province. The findings illustrates that livelihood diversification may not be relevant for household welfare in the case of South Africa. However promoting livelihood diversification remain imperative for household welfare in the South Africa in the long-run. It further illustrate that gender of head, education, access to electricity, home agriculture are imperative for the improvement of household welfare. Hence the study recommends policy relating to conditional granting of cash grant support, intensification of rural development programmes, education affordable and accessible at all level and support home stead or subsistence agriculture.
- Format
- 163 leaves
- Format
- Publisher
- University of Fort Hare
- Publisher
- Faculty of Science and Agriculture
- Language
- English
- Rights
- University of Fort Hare
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UFH Department of Agricultural Economics and Extension
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