Food Sec.
(2012) 4:581591
DOI 10.1007/s12571-012-0208-x
ORIGINAL PAPER
Vulnerability of smallholder rural households to food
insecurity in Eastern Ethiopia
Ayalneh Bogale
Received: 3 January 2012 / Accepted: 30 July 2012 / Published online: 12 August 2012
# Springer Science+Business Media B.V. & International Society for Plant Pathology 2012
Abstract Although several empirical methodologies as to
how best assess vulnerability to food insecurity have been
proposed in the literature, none of these has evolved into a
unanimously accepted approach. This article contributes to this
literature by adapting the Vulnerability as Expected Poverty
approach from poverty analysis methodology with the aim of
scrutinizing factors determining household level vulnerability
to food insecurity based on cross-section data collected from
277 randomly selected households in eastern Ethiopia.
Vulnerability to food insecurity was strongly associated with
several factors which included family size, size of cultivated
landholding, soil fertility status of plots, access to irrigation,
number of extension visits, use of fertilizer and improved seed.
The probability that any given households food consumption
expenditure would fall below a specified cut-off level has also
been computed and vulnerable households identified. The total
number of vulnerable households (111) was found to be greater
than those who are currently food insecure (103). This implies
that design and implementation of food security policies and
strategies need to focus not only on those who are observed to
be currently food insecure, but also on setting up social protec-
tion mechanisms to help prevent households from falling more
deeply into food insecurity in the future.
Keywords Food insecurity . Vulnerability as expected
poverty . Food consumption expenditure
Introduction
Food insecurity has characterized Ethiopia in the last few
decades and the most recent Global Hunger Index (GHI)
A. Bogale (*)
University of KwaZulu-Natal,
Pietermaritzburg 3209, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
e-mail: bogalea@ukzn.ac.za
score reveals the extent to which the problem has persisted.
Although this was reduced from 43.2 to 28.7 (33.6 %)
between 1990 and 2011, the latter figure still ranks
Ethiopia 77th out of 81 nations and the situation remains
alarming1 (IFPRI et al. 2011). Food insecurity and pover-
ty have persisted even during the comparatively stable po-
litical period following the downfall of the socialist regime
in 1991 largely due to lack of effective implementation of
strategies to address the specific and lasting effects of dis-
asters, which also require sustained engagement of institu-
tions rather than mere focus on emergency responses
(Lautze et al. 2003).
Although the context of vulnerability to food insecurity is
changing across different regions of the world, it still largely
remains a rural and agricultural phenomenon. Most of the
poor in Ethiopia depend upon the rural sector for their live-
lihoods (Dercon 2008). Some 84 % of the population in
Ethiopia lives in rural areas and is mainly engaged in rain-
fed subsistence agriculture. Thus, vulnerability to food in-
security in the country is also determined by external factors
such as rainfall patterns, land degradation, climate change,
population density, low levels of rural investment and the
global market. Considering these facts, increasing agricul-
tural productivity has been highlighted as a fundamental
step in reducing food insecurity because it not only can
increase food availability and access but also rural income.
Some of the past interventions aimed at promoting agricul-
tural productivity in the country include identifying appro-
priate areas of investment, accelerating policy reforms,
developing institutions to support the private sector and
creating comprehensive development strategies to allocate
resources efficiently (World Bank 2005; Adhikari 2011).
Investment in agriculture and improving resilience among
1
The categories are low (GHI4.9), moderate (5.0GHI9.9), serious
(10.0GHI19.9), alarming (20.0GHI29.9), and extremely alarm-
ing (30.0)
582
smallholder farmers remain key to providing sustained ac-
cess to food for all and reducing vulnerability to food
insecurity due to natural disasters such as drought (FAO
2011). Such strategies at the ground level, which are pro-
moted by both the private and public sectors, include access
to improved seeds, farm management techniques, irrigation,
fertilizer and soil and water conservation practices. These
increase productivity sustainably and reduce production
risks to farmers, especially smallholders. Furthermore im-
proved access to both input and output markets is promoted.
In 2002, the Ethiopian government introduced its first
donor-supported poverty reduction strategy, the Sustainable
Development and Poverty Reduction Program (SDPRP)
followed by the Plan for Accelerated and Sustained
Development to End Poverty 2005/06-2009/10 (PASDEP)
(MOFED 2006). PASDEP intensified sectoral programs in
agriculture, health, education, and infrastructure in order to
achieve the MDGs which underscore the centrality of pov-
erty reduction and attainment of sustained food security
(Carter and Barrett 2005). PASDEP put in place new pro-
grams for food security and made some improvements to the
strategy of agricultural development-led industrialization.
The Food Security Program (FSP) was reformulated to
address problems of shortfalls in food production, vulnera-
bility to falls in household incomes and consequent hunger,
which the country has faced repeatedly, through adaptation
of development alternatives to bring about a lasting solution.
While, on an aggregate scale, food insecurity still persists
at debilitating levels in Ethiopia, this does not say much
about the location specific extent and determinants of house-
hold vulnerability to food insecurity (Mwanakatwe and
Barrow 2010). Vulnerability is usually portrayed in terms
of susceptibility to harm from exposure to stress associated
with environmental and social change and from the absence
of capacity to adapt (Adger 2006). The term also refers to
the relationship between poverty, food insecurity, risk and
efforts to manage risk (Alwang et al. 2001). In all formula-
tions, the key parameters of vulnerability are the stress to
which a household is exposed, its sensitivity, and its coping
and adaptive capacity.
The present study scrutinizes factors that are associated
with household level vulnerability to food insecurity by
adapting the Vulnerability as Expected Poverty (VEP) ap-
proach (Chaudhuri 2003), which has been extensively used
to analyze vulnerability to poverty (Sarris and Karfakis
2006; Gaiha and Imai 2008; Gnther and Harttgen 2009;
Kruy et al. 2010). It makes use of household survey data
collected from the eastern highlands of Ethiopia. The study
not only contributes to the emerging and scarce literature on
vulnerability to expected food insecurity but also can be
adapted and scaled-up to national level when such data are
available. The article is structured as follows. Section
Vulnerability: Conceptual underpinning and empirics
A. Bogale
reviews the literature on concepts and empirics of vulnerabil-
ity. Section Data Collection and Description of the Study
Area describes the data and study area. Section Empirical
Methods presents the empirical methods employed. Section
Empirical Results and Discussion discusses the results and
conclusions are provided in Section Conclusions.
Vulnerability: conceptual underpinning and empirics
There is little consensus among researchers and academics
about the meaning of vulnerability due mainly to its diverse
use in the different disciplines of economics, psychology,
anthropology, environmental sciences and engineering. This
diversity and apparent lack of convergence over time are, in
many ways, a reflection of the divergent objectives of the
research and the phenomena being explained (Adger 2006).
Although human geographers and human ecologists have
made significant contributions to the present understanding
of social-ecological systems, they theorized vulnerability
mainly in the context of environmental change and exposure
to hazards or shocks. Studies of food insecurity define
vulnerability through entitlement theory (Sen 1981), which
focuses on actual or potential resources available to house-
holds based on their own production, assets or reciprocal
arrangements. However, food insecurity, which describes
livelihood states of a household at a particular point in time,
is not the same as vulnerability (Ellis 2003). Vulnerability is
a forward looking concept and a household is said to be
vulnerable to future loss of welfare if any risky event
reduces household welfare below socially accepted norms.
It seeks to describe how prone individuals and families are
to being unable to cope with uncertain adverse events that
may happen to them, such as prolonged lack of rainfall, or
other difficulties. The degree of vulnerability depends on the
characteristics of the risk and the households ability to
respond which, in turn, depends on household character-
isticsnotably their asset-base (Alwang et al. 2001; Dilley
and Boudreau 2001).
After critical assessment of recent conceptual, methodo-
logical and empirical developments in vulnerability assess-
ments, Dilley and Boudreau (2001) concluded that, on a
practical level, lack of common understanding about funda-
mental terms, data requirement and interpretation of vulner-
ability to food insecurity have hampered the development of
both theory and methods. However, there is increasing
recognition that there are considerable flows of households
into and out of poverty and food insecurity over time which
instigated focus on analysis of household vulnerability as
the basis for a social protection strategy (Hoddinott and
Quisumbing 2003). A forward looking approach, which
identifies not only households that are presently food inse-
cure but also those that are vulnerable to shocks and other
Vulnerability of rural households to food insecurity
risks, such as natural disasters and extreme climate conditions,
is imperative. This will enable the task of protecting house-
holds from the adverse effects of these shocks to be performed
more effectively (Holzmann and Jorgensen 2000).
Significant attempts have been made to analyze vulnera-
bility of households in developing countries, from which
some relevant policy options have been proposed. Prowse
(2003) provides a review of the relationship between vul-
nerability and chronic poverty and argues that vulnerability
should be more widely recognized as being a cause, symp-
tom and constituent of poverty. He advocates placing an
increased emphasis on assets and entitlements in order to
understand individual catastrophes as opposed to analysis
of the strength or severity of shocks. Hoddinott and
Quisumbing (2008) provide a comprehensive review of
literature on approaches to vulnerability including
Vulnerability as Expected Poverty (VEP), Vulnerability as
Low Expected Utility (VEU) and Vulnerability as Uninsured
Exposure to Risk (VER).
Chaudhuri et al. (2002) and Chaudhuri (2003) provide
some of the initial contributions to the recent literature on
Vulnerability as Expected Poverty and have broadened the
scope of poverty analysis to take account of vulnerability.
They developed a conceptual and methodological overview
and demonstrated this empirically using cross section data at
the household level from the Philippines, Indonesia and
China. Their results show that the vulnerable population,
defined by the computed expected value of a poverty score
in the future and conditional on a series of covariates, is
generally larger than the fraction observed as poor at a given
point in time. This implies that the true poverty cost of risk
is higher than that observed.
Other applications of the methodology, employing cross-
section household data, provide findings along similar lines.
These include those of Sarris and Karfakis (2006) for
Tanzania, Gnther and Harttgen (2009) for Madagascar,
Gaiha and Imai (2008) for Tanzania, Zhang and Wan
(2008) for China, Azam and Imai (2009) for Bangladesh
and Deressa et al. (2009) for Ethiopia. Gnther and Harttgen
(2009) assessed empirically the vulnerability of households
to idiosyncratic and covariate shocks in Madagascar and
showed that covariate shocks have a relatively higher impact
on rural households. Deressa et al. (2009) employed the
vulnerability approach to measure vulnerability of rural
households to climate related shocks in Ethiopia. The results
demonstrated that vulnerability of households is highly de-
pendent on minimum daily requirementsthe higher the
daily requirements, the more vulnerable the household.
Capaldo et al. (2010) used a vulnerability analysis model,
drawing on household survey data from Nicaragua, and
estimated the probability that a given household would gain
access to sufficient food in the near future. The model
allowed them to analyse how vulnerability related to various
583
household characteristics and then enabled them to profile
the most vulnerable households. Cruces et al. (2010) pre-
sented cross-sectional vulnerability estimates for 18
countries in Latin America, and also used longitudinal data
for a sub-set of countries for which it was available. The
validation exercise indicated that the vulnerability model
provided good estimates of aggregate poverty level.
The vulnerability analysis approach has also been used to
classify households into those that suffer from chronic pov-
erty and those in transient poverty. Kruy et al. (2010)
assessed poverty issues in Cambodia by estimating house-
hold vulnerability to poverty and classified the poor into the
chronic poor and the transient poor, based on poverty inci-
dence and vulnerability. The main results suggested that
poverty policy needs to focus not only on poverty allevia-
tion, but also on setting up social protection mechanisms to
help prevent people from falling into deeper poverty traps in
the future.
Other approaches to vulnerability measurement in ap-
plied work involve the use of panel data at household level.
Studies using this approach include, among others, those of
Dercon (2004), Dercon et al. (2005), Skoufias and
Quisumbing (2003), Dercon and Krishnan (2000) for
Ethiopia, Suryahadi et al. (2000) for Indonesia, Kamanou
and Morduch (2002) for Cote dIvoire and Dhamija and
Bhide (2011) for India. Although these studies are informa-
tive for policy and are methodologically sound, their use is
relatively limited in most developing countries where large
amounts of panel data are practically non-existant.
Data collection and description of the study area
Data collection
The analysis of vulnerability to food insecurity in this paper
is based on a household survey conducted from August to
October 2010, in order to minimize the seasonal variation in
expenditure on household consumption following harvest
and the hungry period, in three districts in eastern
Ethiopia. The three districts, namely Haramaya, Kersa and
Tulo were selected purposively to capture agro-ecological,
economic and social diversities within the eastern highlands
of Ethiopia. The household survey was carried out after a
two-stage random sampling procedure. In the first stage
five, four and three peasant associations (PAs) were selected
randomly from a list of PAs in the three districts. In the
second stage, sample households were randomly drawn
from a complete list of respective PA members in confor-
mity with the proportionate to size random sampling proce-
dure. In total, the survey covered 277 households. The
selection of appropriate households for the intensive house-
hold survey was based on the intermediate results of the
584
extensive survey. One of the selection criteria was to en-
sure representation of respondents with contrasting char-
acteristics in terms of prevailing farming systems. The
sample size took into account the complexity of the issue,
and the accuracy and adequacy of data necessary for the
statistical analysis to be used. A structured questionnaire
was designed and pretested before executing the intensive
household survey. The survey elicited information on
household characteristics such as demography, education,
inventory of assets, current production and use of non-
labor input, subjective assessment of soil fertility status
and soil and water conservation measures, among other
factors.
The study area
Agriculture is the mainstay of rural households in the east-
ern highlands of Ethiopia. Activities of households are cen-
tered on crop production and animal husbandry as these are
important components of the integrated mixed farming sys-
tem. The scanty reconnaissance studies so far undertaken,
localized detailed studies and general observations indicate
that the region is of high agricultural potential because it is
endowed with suitable and productive land resources. These
include favorable climate, fertile soils, diverse ecology, and
length of growing season. However, in practice, high and
increasing population pressure, land and water resource
degradation and recurrent drought have turned the region
into one of the parts of the country that is most structurally
food insecure.
The region is characterized by three agro-ecological
zones: the lowlands (3040 %), the midlands (3545 %)
and the highlands (1520 %). There are two rainy seasons;
belg (March to May) and meher (July to September). Belg
rains are mainly used for land preparation and planting of
long cycle crops such as maize and sorghum and seed bed
preparation for meher crops. The meher rains are used for
planting cereal crops such as barley, teff, wheat and vegeta-
bles e.g. onion, shallot and potatoes in the mid- and the
highlands and peanuts in the lowlands. Besides, meher rains
are also responsible for the growth and development of
perennial crops such as coffee and tchat (Catha adulis).
Despite the privilege of being able to grow these cash crops,
the region repeatedly faces food shortages.
Cereals, specially sorghum and maize are the major an-
nual crops grown in the region. Sorghum is the most impor-
tant staple food, followed by maize. The average yield of
sorghum ranges from 1.0 to 1.4 t per ha while that of maize
ranges from 1.4 to 1.8 t per ha. Teff and wheat are less
important cereals in terms of the area covered by the crops.
However, they serve the strategic purpose of covering arable
land which has not been planted, either due to lack of oxen
for tilling or shortage of labour. They may also be used to
A. Bogale
replant areas where previously planted crops have been
damaged by drought stress.
The most important perennial crop in the zone in terms of
area coverage is tchat. This is a shrub, which is grown for
its narcotic substances, cathine and cathinone. These are
found in the tips of young leaves and are released when
they are chewed. Tchat requires little input of labour, is
fairly resistant to pests and disease and can withstand mois-
ture stress. Once the plant is established, the only manage-
ment practices required are weeding and harvesting. The
plant may be harvested 3 years after planting. Owners may
pick the crop continuously for their own consumption but it
may also be harvested two to three times per year according
to the availability of irrigation water.
Empirical methods
This study expresses food security as the capacity of house-
holds to spend a predetermined amount of money on food
required to achieve the daily minimum dietary requirement
of 2,100 kcal per adult equivalent. Conversely, a household
is considered to be vulnerable to food insecurity if its
expected expenditure on food will be less than the prede-
termined amount.
Two approaches may be distinguished in modeling the
determinants of household level food insecurity. The first
represents food security status of households as a binary
choice model where the endogenous variable is expressed as
a dummy, with 1 representing the household being food
insecure and 0 otherwise. The second approach expresses
household level food insecurity based on food consumption
expenditure as an indicator of wellbeing and defines food
insecurity in terms of the households per capita consump-
tion level (World Bank 2002; Demeke et al. 2003). Many
researchers have successfully employed the latter model in
analyzing determinants of poverty and food insecurity in
developing countries including Ethiopia (Albert and
Collado 2004; Demeke et al. 2003; Datt et al. 2000;
Capaldo et al. 2010).
Accordingly, in order to analyze the household level data
collected for this study, various empirical models were used.
The study adapted the methodology proposed by Chaudhuri
et al. (2002) to estimate the expected mean and variance in
food consumption expenditure using the cross-section data,
and the Foster, Greer and Thorbecke (Foster et al. 1984)
decomposable poverty index.
Gaiha and Imai (2008) extend the procedure proposed by
Chaudhuri et al. (2002) to measure the vulnerability of
households to poverty in rural India. Gnther and Harttgen
(2009) empirically illustrated how the model can be
employed to analyze households vulnerability to idiosyn-
cratic and covariate shocks in Madagascar using cross-
Vulnerability of rural households to food insecurity
sectional data. Whereas Capaldo et al. (2010) provided
estimates of the probability that a given household would
lose or gain access to sufficient food in the near future,
drawing on household survey data from Nicaragua. The
same procedure can be followed in estimating vulnerability
to food insecurity. In this case, vulnerability of households
is defined as the probability that a household will be food
insecure in the future and can be expressed as:


Vit Pr Ci;t1  Z 1 weigh Eq. (1) and re-estimate it by weighted least squares,
where vulnerability of household to food insecurity at time t,
Vit, is the probability that the i-th households level of food
consumption expenditure at time t+1, Ci,t+1, will be below
the minimum daily expenditure required to meet the calorie
requirement of 2,100 kcal per adult equivalent, Z. This
minimum threshold can alternatively be referred to as the
food poverty line.
Following Chaudhuri et al. (2002), Gaiha and Imai
(2008) and Gnther and Harttgen (2009) derived empirical-
ly a variant of VEP from the food consumption expenditure
function as:
ln Ci Xi b "i 2 the model, the probability that a household will be food
where Ci represents the food consumption expenditure per
adult equivalent for the i-th household, Xi represents a
bundle of observable household characteristics, is a vector
of coefficients of household characteristics to be estimated,
and i is a disturbance term with mean zero and variance of
2e;i. Food consumption expenditure Ci is assumed to be log-
normally distributed and as such the disturbance term, i
will be normally distributed. Furthermore, it is assumed that
i captures the idiosyncratic shocks that contribute to the
difference in food consumption expenditure levels for
households that share the same characteristics. But it is
unlikely that it captures covariate shocks which can affect
all households at a given time and unexpected very large
negative shocks such as economic crises.
Furthermore, we assume that the variance of the unex-
plained part of food consumption expenditure i depends on
household is observable characteristics:
2e;i Xi t i 3
where represents a vector of parameters to be estimated,
is the vector of residuals of this second estimation. Standard
regression analysis based on OLS assumes homoscedastic-
ity, and estimates of and will be unbiased but inefficient
if this assumption does not hold. To deal with this problem
and obtain consistent estimate of parameters, it is necessary
to allow heteroskedasticity, that is, variances of the distur-
bance term to vary across households depending on Xi.
Thus the estimates of and could be obtained using
585
three-step Feasible Generalized Least Squares (FGLS)
(Christiaensen and Subbarao 2005; Chaudhuri et al. 2002).
This involves first estimating Eq. (2) employing the
Ordinary Least Square (OLS) method. Then Eq. (3) is
estimated by OLS using the squared residuals from the
estimation of Eq. (2) as dependent variables. The predictions
from this regression are used to re-estimate Eq. (3) by OLS
after having weighted each residual by Xi. The new esti-
mates of are asymptotically efficient, and are used to
to obtain asymptotically efficient estimates of (Chaudhuri
et al. 2002). Then, using the estimates b b and b , we can
compute the expected log food consumption expenditure
and the variance of log food consumption expenditure for
each household as follows (Gaiha and Imai 2008):
E ln Ci jXi  Xi b
b 4
V ln Ci jXi  Xib
5
By assuming that food consumption expenditure is log-
normally distributed, and using the estimated parameters of
insecure in the near future (say, at time t+1), is expressed
as (Gaiha and Imai 2008; Gnther and Harttgen 2009):
!
ln Z  ln Cbi
b b
Vi Pln Ci < ln ZjXi f p 6
b2i
Where (.) is the cumulative density of the standard normal
distribution function,
bis the standard error of the regression;
Z is the prescribed threshold food expenditure to meet the
minimum energy requirement, in short, food poverty line. Vbi
is a set of estimates one for each household and denotes the
probability that each household faces of falling below the
minimum threshold in the future. Its value ranges between
zero and 1. When Vbi 0; household i will spend an ade-
quate amount on food for consumption in the future with
certainty that at least the minimum amount of calories
required will be obtained, and when Vbi 1; household i
will consume fewer calories than the prescribed threshold.
Even though various options have been discussed in the
literature as to how to determine the cut-off point to classify
households as vulnerable and non-vulnerable, Capaldo
et al. (2010) justify the use of 0.5 as appropriate for studies
in undernutrition and food insecurity. Accordingly, in this
study a household is classified as vulnerable if Vbi is greater
than or equal to 0.5, and non-vulnerable, otherwise.
Even though such a model enables researchers to esti-
mate vulnerability from cross-section data in the absence of
time-variant information on consumption expenditure, it
should be noted that the measure can correctly reflect
586
vulnerability assuming that the distribution of consumption
expenditure across households at a given time represents the
time-series variation of consumption expenditure of the
household (Hoddinott and Quisumbing 2003; Gaiha and
Imai 2008). Obviously, the existence of measurement error
is a major concern for the estimation of vulnerability which
could lead to an overestimation of variance in consumption
(Gnther and Harttgen 2009). Thus, in the regression of
consumption expenditure of households, it is assumed that
the data are fairly accurate. Unfortunately, household
expenditure surveys, particularly in developing countries,
do not meet this ideal situation for a variety of reasons. In
case the error of measurement in the dependent variable is
uncorrelated with the exogenous variables, the estimated
coefficients will be unbiased and the estimated variances
are expected to be larger but still unbiased (for details see
Gujarati 2004: pp. 525526). Therefore, even though
lengthy panel data are preferred for the estimation of house-
hold vulnerability, the VEP approach is an attempt at assess-
ing vulnerability of households where there is no panel data,
as is often the case in developing countries (Gnther and
Harttgen 2009).
Finally, a weighted average of the probabilities of being
food insecure provides the predicted aggregate index for the
sample as a whole. Thus, the aggregate head count food
insecurity index V0 of the sample was calculated as the
weighted mean of the above estimated probability that a
household will be food insecure, where the weights are
given by households size (hi) expressed in adult equivalent
terms (Demeke et al. 2003; Datt et al. 2000).
Empirical results and discussion
Determination of food poverty line
Quite a wide range of methods of food security measure-
ment have been developed and used for empirical research,
among which individual dietary intake, dietary diversity and
indices of household coping strategies are the most com-
monly used (Maxwell 1996; Hoddinott 2002). Each of these
methods has specific data requirements and analytical pro-
cedures. In this study, we adapted the household dietary
intake in order to determine the expenditure on food re-
quired to meet the minimum daily dietary energy require-
ment, i.e. the food poverty line. Although the data
requirement of this method is considerable and its collection
necessitates a very comprehensive questionnaire, it remains
a widely accepted measure of food insecurity as far as its
economic dimensions are concerned. Accordingly, the fol-
lowing procedure has been used. In the first run a basket of
food items typically consumed by the poor were identified
from the food consumption questionnaire. The quantity of
A. Bogale
the basket was determined in such a way that the given
bundle meets the predetermined level of minimum daily
dietary requirement i.e. 2,100 kcal per day per adult equiv-
alent. This basket was valued at local prices and the value
of the food poverty line was determined. As a result, the
food poverty line for the study area was found to be ETB
2018. In order to make possible a comparison of this figure
with those of other regions and the nationwide figure as well
as taking into account the effect of inflation, this poverty
line figure for food was deflated by the survey year con-
sumer price index (CPI) of the Oromiya region. The food
CPI of the survey year was reported to be 187.8 % (2,0060
100) (CSA 2011). Thus the deflated food poverty line was
estimated to be ETB 1075 per adult equivalent per year at
December 2006 constant price. These results are extensively
used in the subsequent analysis of food insecurity in the
present study.
Variable description
The summary statistics of variables hypothesized to
influence vulnerability of households to food insecurity
and included in the empirical model are given in Tables
1, 2. These include demographic and social character-
istics, provision and use of productivity enhancing inputs and
service infrastructure, and productive asset holding of the
household.
Information on the demographic structure and character-
istics of a household includes gender of the household head,
family size, dependency ratio and age of the head of house-
hold. In the study area, male household heads have better
opportunity to have access to assets and therefore female
headed households are expected to be more susceptible to
food insecurity (Bigsten et al. 2002; Bogale et al. 2005). It is
also hypothesized that households with larger numbers of
members and a higher dependency ratio have a greater
probability of being food insecure. As age captures the
experience accumulated in farming, it may therefore be
associated with better welfare (Albert and Collado 2004).
Exposure of the household head to education can affect a
households standard of living as it helps in the development
of skills. These may result in higher marginal productivity
of labor that eventually enables members of the household
to engage in more remunerative jobs. Hence it is expected
that education would be positively correlated with house-
holds consumption levels. Social capital is captured by the
number of people, including traditional self-help associations
and individuals living outside the location, that the household
resorts to in case of facing idiosyncratic shocks. Number of
household members who were sick during the past 12 months
at the time of survey also includes information on idiosyncrat-
ic shock. It is assumed that poor health affects productivity
and living standards in many ways, such as through low labor
Vulnerability of rural households to food insecurity 587

Table 1 Definition of variables and summary statistics of household characteristics

Variable code Viable label Mean Std. Dev. Min. Max.

LnCONEXAE Natural log of consumption expenditure per adult equivalent 7.13469 0.374758 6.33 8.1
SEXHH Dummy of sex of household sex (male01) 0.88 0.32 0 1
FAMSZAE Size of household in adult equivalent 4.65 1.47 1.6 9.82
EDUC Education level of the household head in years of schooling completed 2.78 2.41 0 12
AGE Age of the household head in years 35.5 8.18 25 68
DEP Dependency ratio 1.39 0.78 0 5
LDCULT Total cultivated land holding 0.84 0.34 0.35 2.42
TLUAE Livestock holding in tropical livestock unit 0.39 0.22 0 1.42
DIVCROP Crop diversification 4.60 1.33 1 8
FERT Use rate of fertilizer 0.27 0.19 0 0.95
SEED Use rate of improved seeds 0.15 0.08 0 0.32
IRRG Dummy for access to irrigation (Yes01) 0.19 0.39 0 1
EXVIST Number of visits by extension agent 1.87 1.20 0 4
CreditA Dummy for access to credit (Yes01) 0.27 0.44 0 1
DISPSER Average walking distance to public services in hours 1.68 0.81 0.5 4
SoilF Dummy for fertility status of plots (Fertile01) 0.31 0.46 0 1
RELY Number of person to rely on during shocks 2.92 1.55 0 9
SICK Number of sick persons in 1 year 0.83 0.87 0 4

Table 2 Estimates of expected log food consumption expenditure and variance (N0277)

Viable label Log food consumption Variance of food

expenditure consumption expenditure

Coef. Robust Std. Err. Coef. Robust Std. Err.

Dummy of sex of household sex (male01) 0.0238 0.0219 0.0077** 0.00332

Size of household in adult equivalent 0.0438*** 0.0088 0.00045 0.00114
Education level of the household head in years of schooling completed 0.0038 0.0047 0.0018** 0.00075
Age of the household head in years 0.0021 0.0013 0.00043 0.00034
Dependency ratio 0.01158 0.0094 0.00040 0.00125
Total cultivated land holding 0.0889*** 0.0314 0.00540 0.000435
Livestock holding in tropical livestock unit 0.0146 0.0398 0.00333 0.00576
Crop diversification 0.1149* 0.0069 0.00028 0.00106
Use rate of fertilizer 0.9038*** 0.0990 0.02006 0.01641
Use rate of improved seeds 1.2966*** 0.2012 0.02858 0.02903
Dummy for access to irrigation (Yes01) 0.0632*** 0.0208 0.00027 0.00318
Number of visits by extension agent 0.01357** 0.0067 0.00035 0.001558
Dummy for access to credit (Yes01) 0.0233 0.0187 0.00595 0.00496
Average walking distance to public services in hours 0.0176 0.0123 0.00050 0.00244
Dummy for fertility status of plots (Fertile01) 0.0505*** 0.0167 0.00051 0.00263
Number of person to rely on during shocks 0.0126* 0.0065 0.00051 0.00125
Number of sick persons in 1 year 0.0036 0.0083 0.00122 0.00154
Constant 6.6754*** 0.07555 0.0139 0.0199
F(17, 257) 178.55 6.78
Prob>F 0.000 0.000
R-squared 0.9004 0.1992
Root MSE 0.12561 0.0172
588
productivity due to physical weakness and the high cost of
medicines. Thus larger numbers of sick persons are hypothe-
sized to be positively related to food insecurity.
Household asset holdings were assessed using owned and
operated cultivated land and its fertility status, ownership of
livestock and access to credit. Losses of farm land to other
uses because of population growth and resource degrada-
tion, as well as limits to the amount of new land that can be
brought into cultivation are major constraints for food pro-
duction in the study area. An average household owns only
0.84 ha of cultivated land on which an average of about 5
household members has to be supported. In a farming sys-
tem where agricultural productivity remains at about 1 t of
cereal per hectare, attainment of sustainable food security is
challenging with such very small land holdings. Moreover,
nearly 79 % of the households consider that their cultivated
plots are degraded and they rely on rain-fed agriculture with
only 19 % having access to irrigation.
Finally, we also used a set of variables that reflect provi-
sion and use of productivity enhancing inputs and service
infrastructure. It is very evident that the use of fertilizer and
improved seeds make direct positive contributions to agri-
cultural productivity and production and the probability of
being food secure. In the study area, however, average
households use fertilizer at only 26.6 % of the recommended
rate and improved seeds are planted on only 15.1 % of the
cultivated plots. Moreover, members of an average house-
hold need to walk an average of 96 min to basic services
including health centre, veterinary services, education and
water services. Restricted access to these services means
less time for productive activities and results in lower stan-
dard of living. Table 1 provides a list of all variables,
including their mean values and standard deviations.
Determinants of vulnerability to food insecurity
We estimate the expected log food consumption expenditure
and variance of log food consumption after accounting for
heteroskedasticity through the use of generalized least squares
method discussed earlier. Generally, the model had good
overall fit and most variables performed as expected.
Although endogeneity may be concerns for some of the ex-
planatory variables, this exercise, as is the case for any econo-
metric analysis, serves as a vehicle to estimate relative
vulnerability and not to identify direct causes of inadequate
expenditure on food (Capaldo et al. 2010). The F statistic of
the model is highly significant (P<0.001 with 17,259 degrees
of freedom), indicating that the expected expenditure on food
by households is related to the independent variables. Based
on a simple multicolinearity test using Variance Inflation
Factor (VIF) for continuous variables and Contingency
Coefficient for dummy variables, it was confirmed that there
is no strong correlation among the independent variables.
A. Bogale
Of the seventeen variables considered in the model, nine
had a statistically significant impact on expected expendi-
ture on food and therefore food security status in the future.
These included household size, number of individuals to
rely upon during shocks, number of visits by extension
agent, use of fertilizer and improved seeds, soil fertility
status, crop diversification, total land holding and access to
irrigation.
Household size, expressed as adult equivalents, had a
significant negative impact on expected food expenditure
(P<0.01), the chance of falling into food insecurity increas-
ing with the size of this parameter. This result clearly indi-
cates the importance of family planning in the study area
and the necessity of improving access of the poor to educa-
tion and information on family planning methods.
Adoption of yield enhancing technologies including use
of fertilizer and improved seeds, as well as support by
extension agents, also improved expected food expenditure
of households and therefore enhanced food security. These
inputs and services contributed towards increase in agricul-
tural income leading to higher levels of consumption.
Moreover, higher agricultural income, besides reducing
food insecurity, improved the welfare status of households
which, in turn, enabled them to invest more in such items as
livestock and access to education.
Cultivated land is the most fundamental resource of rural
households in Ethiopia: it is essential for the generation of
income, accumulation of wealth and its transference be-
tween generations and, most importantly, it is a hedge
against food insecurity. The size of land cultivated had a
statistically significant (P<0.01) and positive influence on
expected food expenditure per adult equivalent. The size of
landholding is a surrogate for a host of factors including
wealth, access to credit and capacity to bear risk. Larger
farms are associated with greater wealth and availability of
capital which increases the probability of investment in farm
inputs that increase food production. Crop diversification
was also positively correlated with expected food consump-
tion and was statistically significant.
Better land quality is also positively related to expected
food expenditure. However, Ethiopia, as one of the few
African countries with a long history of settled agriculture
has exhausted its soil fertility much earlier than most.
Moreover, failure to make the crucial transition to sustain-
able and intensive use of the land and failure to introduce the
institutional adjustments required to reverse land degrada-
tion has constrained the flow of investment capital, knowl-
edge and skilled management to the rural areas where the
majority of the Ethiopian population lives.
Access to irrigation is also among variables with a statis-
tically significant and positive coefficient. Research findings
consistently indicate that irrigation development enhances
productivity, reduces household food insecurity and
Vulnerability of rural households to food insecurity
alleviates poverty in rural areas of Ethiopia (Bacha et al.
2011; Tesfaye et al. 2008). In the study area, farmers use
low-cost pumps, wells, stream diversion and water harvest-
ing technologies to supplement moisture for their crops.
There are also a few modern irrigation schemes managed
by irrigation water users. Access to irrigation enables rural
households to produce more than one crop per year, increase
their income and consumption levels and diversify their
cropping systems. However, irrigation cannot be considered
as a panacea for poverty alleviation and food insecurity
(Bacha et al. 2011). There are farm households which may
remain food insecure irrespective of their access to irrigation
because there are other correlates of food insecurity includ-
ing family size, lack of education, training and improved
inputs. These must also be addressed in order to have a deep
and lasting impact on food insecurity.
Once food security and vulnerability thresholds have
been established, based on current levels, these may be
extended into several food insecurity and vulnerability cat-
egories as in Table 3. First, households may be classified as
of low or high vulnerability according to whether the vul-
nerability score is <0.5 or 0.5, respectively (Pritchett et al.
2000). Second, the sample households may be divided into
two distinct groups using the food poverty line cut-off: the
food insecure and the food secure. As discussed earlier,
those who have average food consumption expenditure be-
low the food poverty line are generally termed as food
insecure and the rest as food secure.
The results reveal that 90 (32.5 %) households suffered
from chronic food insecurity as their food consumption ex-
penditure was below the cut-off and at the same time were
highly vulnerable to food insecurity. These households are
most likely to remain food insecure in the future. In contrast,
13 (4.69 %) households were in transient food insecurity,
being currently food insecure but having low vulnerability to
food insecurity. They may escape food insecurity in the near
future. Moreover, 8 (2.88 %) of the sample households were
food secure at present, while being at risk of being food
insecure in the future. That is, these households were living
under the threat of becoming food insecure in the near future.
As Table 3 shows, only 166 (59.93 %) households enjoyed
relatively stable levels of food security as they were both food
secure and not vulnerable.
Table 3 Classification and decomposition by vulnerability and food security status (N0277)
Food security status
Food insecure (Exp<Z)
Vulnerability High vulnerability Vi >0.5) CFI 90 (32.5 %)
Low vulnerability (Vi <0.5) TFI 13 (4.69 %)
Total
589
It is relevant for policy makers to take account of the
totality of vulnerable groupsabout 40 % in the sample
surveyedin order to effectively address the challenges of
food insecurity. These vulnerable groups consist of house-
holds that are chronically food insecure, transiently food in-
secure, and those that are currently food secure but are highly
vulnerable to food insecurity. Remedial action could take the
form of some combination of prevention, protection, and
livelihood promotion interventions which would give them a
more secure basis from which to diversify their activities and
enable them to cope better with shocks and risks.
Conclusions
Ethiopia has enjoyed about 912 % annual expansion in the
economy during the past 7 years. Nevertheless, the incidence
of food insecurity is not only higher than most developing
countries but still remains at unacceptable levels. Therefore,
attaining food security will remain among the principal objec-
tives of the development policy of the country for the foresee-
able future. Informed policy decisions to attain food security
require research outputs with relevant policy implications. As
a contribution to this aim, this study was carried out by
adapting Vulnerability as Expected Poverty (VEP) approach
to food insecurity. The approach was based on cross-section
data and so minimizes reliance on panel data which is hard to
obtain in most developing countries. The study systematically
constructed appropriate probability distribution of food con-
sumption expenditures of sampled households conditional on
their characteristics and subject to idiosyncratic shocks which
were then used to estimate head count ratio. Moreover, house-
hold demographic and social characteristics, provision and
use of productivity enhancing inputs and service infrastruc-
ture, and productive asset holding of the households were
analyzed as determinants of expected food consumption ex-
penditure. We found that vulnerability to food insecurity was
strongly associated with several factors which included family
size, size of cultivated landholding, soil fertility status of plots,
access to irrigation, number of extension visits, use of fertilizer
and improved seed.
The approach also allowed us to derive categories of
households relating to their vulnerability and food security
Food secure (Exp>Z) Total
HVFS 8 (2.88 %) 98 (35.38 %)
LVFS 166 (59.93 %) 179 (64.42 %)
103 (37.18 %) 174 (62.82 %) 277 (100 %)
590
status. Accordingly, sample households were grouped into
chronic food insecure (32.5 %), transient food insecure
(4.69 %), highly vulnerable-food secure (2.88 %) and low
vulnerable-food secure (59.93 %), whereas the head count
index for food insecurity was 37.18 %. The results not only
depict the fact that total vulnerable households (111) are
greater than those considered to be food insecure (103),
but also allow us reiterate the importance of vulnerability
assessment and analysis to monitor progress of targeted
interventions to reduce vulnerability of households. This
fact directs us to conclude that food security policy and
strategies need to focus not only on those who are currently
food insecure, but also on setting up social protection mech-
anisms to help prevent people from falling more deeply into
food insecurity in the future.
Acknowledgments The author thanks the Editor-in-Chief of the
Journal and two anonymous reviewers for very helpful and profession-
al comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this article.
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Ayalneh Bogale received his
PhD in Agricultural and Re-
source Economics from Hum-
boldt University, Berlin and he
holds BSc and MSc degrees in
Agricultural Economics from
Haramaya University, the then
Alemaya University of Agricul-
ture, Ethiopia. He has served at
Haramaya University in various
academic ranks including Lec-
turer, Assistant Professor and
Associate Professor. He has a
wide range of experience in han-
dling lectures for both under-
graduate and postgraduate students and has supervised MSc and PhD
students registered both at Haramaya University and Humboldt Uni-
versity. Research and fellowship awards include the Alexander von
Humboldt Research Fellowship (20072009), the Agriculture for
Peace Research Fellowship from the International Foundation for
Science and the Institute for Advanced Studies of the United Nations
University (2004) as well as the DAAD and Nuffic Scholarships. His
papers may be found in several academic journals, including the
Journal of Development Studies, Land Degradation and Development,
Human Ecology, Ecological Economics, Irrigation and Drainage Sys-
tems, Quarterly Journal of International Agriculture, Journal of Rural
Development in the Tropics and Sub-tropics and Journal of Rural
Development. He has made numerous paper contributions to national
and international conferences in order to share his findings from
collaborative research projects. His research interests are economics
of resource degradation, poverty and food security, property rights and
adoption of technologies. He is currently Associate Professor in Food
Security and Director of the African Centre for Food Security (ACFS)
at the University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa.