Socio-economic and Demographic Determinants of Food Security in Low Income Households in the City of Kigali, Rwanda

Abstract

Last two decades, around 47 per cent of the global population lived in urban areas; this number increased to 55 per cent in 2018 and it is expected to reach 60 per cent by 2030. Rural urban migration in the low-income countries has been always characterized by poverty migration from rural to urban, the survival in cities depends on income that helps to cater for all the basic needs including food and food insecurity is becoming one of the pressing issues. The study reviewed literature on the study variables and theories: the sustainable livelihood framework, theories of poverty and capability theory. This research sought to assess the effect of the socio-economic and demographic factors on the low-income household’s food security in the city of Kigali. The research was driven by five specific objectives: to investigate the level of influence of Household income on food security for the low-income families, to examine how the demographic characteristics determine the level of food security in low income Households, to determine the level of influence of the economic characteristic on food security for the low-income households, to determine the level of influence of the social characteristic on food security for the low-income households and to assess the moderating effect of inflation on food security for the low-income households. The target population comprised of the low-income households; in category I and II of Ubudehe poverty classification from 26 Sectors in the three districts of the City of Kigali. A combination of quantitative and qualitative research approaches was adopted; the quantitative approach involved the application of survey method in the form of a cross sectional design; for the qualitative data, the Household’s Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) tool was used to assess household perception on food security; household’s food expenditure, household’s level of anxiety, quantity of food consumed and the number of meals taken a day. The Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) Version 23.0 was used to present descriptive statistics such as percentages, frequency distributions, measures of central tendencies, measures of variations and multi linear regression. The R Square was estimated to reveal how much of the variance in low-income household food security was explained by the model, the model had an R2 of 0.958, which implied that variables under the socio-economic and demographic explained at 95.8 percent the variance in household food security. The statistical significance of the model was also assessed using analysis of variance (ANOVA) of which also the results indicated that a significant relationship exists between socio-economic and demographic factors and low-income household food security and the model was statistically significant. The Multiple Linear Regression results revealed that income is positively related with household food security with most important factors being Household Head’s salaries and Remittances. The Multiple Linear Regression results also revealed a positive and statistically significant relationship between social characteristics with household food security and the most important factor being Household Size. The Multiple Linear Regression Model Results also indicated positive and statistically significant relationship between low-income household demographic characteristics with household food security and the most important factor being dependency ratio. The Household’s Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) analyses equally revealed that more than a half of the low-income households are Food Secure, while slightly more than a quarter of them are Marginally Food Secure and slightly more than a tenth are Moderately Food Insecure while less than five percent are Severely Food Insecure.