Multilevel analysis of determinants of household food insecruirty in Uganda

Abstract

ABSTRACT The main objective of this study was to build a profile of the most food insecure households and communities in Uganda so as to enhance informed decision-making in striving to realize the second global social development goal of Ending hunger, achieving food security and improving nutrition and promoting sustainable agriculture. To accomplish this, Uganda National household survey 2016/17 data were used to investigate which household and community factors influence household food insecurity. This dataset had a hierarchical structure, to account for this nested data, a hierarchical / random effects regression model was fitted to find the significant factors affecting household food insecurity. Kilo calories per person per day was used as the measure of food insecurity and from which a threshold of 2,100 kcal/person/ day was used to classify households as either food insecure or food secure, manual stepwise forward selection was then applied to build the final hierarchal logit model using akaike information criterion to assess the models fit. The results of the multilevel model were compared with results of ordinary stepwise logistic regression. The results showed that food insecurity in Uganda was at catastrophic levels with majority (89.6%) of the households facing caloric insufficiency. Male headed households are more likely to face food insecurity than female headed households (OR=1.37, p<0.01) however food insecurity is also influenced by a multitude of other factors both at the household and community level with community factors accounting for 15.3 % of the total variation in food insecurity. Dysfunctional community services contribute to rising household food insecurity. Further, income differences within the community were found to increase the susceptibility of households to food insecurity (p=0.00). In addition, Households residing in communities that have no within community healthcare access have been identified as at high risk for food insecurity (OR=1.27, P <0.05). Controlling household size, controlling income inequality, increasing access to education and improving within community access to healthcare are central in reduction of household food insecurity in Uganda