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Food security in Kenya: Insights from a household food demand model

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  • Korir, Lilian
  • Rizov, Marian
  • Ruto, Eric

Abstract

This paper evaluates the household food security situation in Kenya in terms of access to food. We apply a quadratic almost ideal demand system (QUAIDS) model to nationally representative household survey data from Kenya, and estimate and interpret price and expenditure elasticities as indicators of household sensitivity to market shocks. Our estimation results show positive expenditure elasticities, close to unity, while all compensated and uncompensated own-price elasticities are negative and smaller in magnitude. A complementary welfare analysis shows high compensated variations in the long run, ranging between 34% and 131% across food groups. This suggests that rising relative food costs have led to deterioration of the food security situation in Kenya, and the most severely affected households seem to be those that rely on informal markets and reside in rural areas. To improve food security, targeted income support could be a more effective policy than price support, given the much higher estimated expenditure elasticities.

Suggested Citation

  • Korir, Lilian & Rizov, Marian & Ruto, Eric, 2020. "Food security in Kenya: Insights from a household food demand model," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 92, pages 99-108.
  • Handle: RePEc:zbw:espost:224501
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econmod.2020.07.015
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    2. William Ginn & Marc Pourroy, 2022. "The Contribution of Food Subsidy Policy to Monetary Policy in India," Working Papers hal-02944209, HAL.
    3. Saeed Nosratabadi & Nesrine Khazami & Marwa Ben Abdallah & Zoltan Lackner & Shahab S. Band & Amir Mosavi & Csaba Mako, 2020. "Social Capital Contributions to Food Security: A Comprehensive Literature Review," Papers 2012.03606, arXiv.org.
    4. Kimsanova, Barchynai & Sanaev, Golib & Herzfeld, Thomas, 2022. "Dynamics of food consumption during political instability: evidence from Kyrgyzstan," 96th Annual Conference, April 4-6, 2022, K U Leuven, Belgium 321213, Agricultural Economics Society - AES.
    5. Hu, Xin & Zhu, Bo & Zhang, Bokai & Zhou, Sitong, 2024. "Do internal and external risk spillovers of the food system matter for national food security?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 136(C).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Food security; Food demand; QUAIDS; Expenditure and price elasticity; Welfare; Kenya;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • O55 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Africa
    • Q18 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Agricultural Policy; Food Policy; Animal Welfare Policy
    • C31 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Cross-Sectional Models; Spatial Models; Treatment Effect Models; Quantile Regressions; Social Interaction Models

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