Pages: (1-11 )
Abstract
Women make essential contributions to economic developments, household income and food security. They remain the invisible workforce in global production chains, where they dominate as house workers and temporary labour. This paper examines the contribution of the female spouse to household food security in Oyo State, Nigeria. Data were obtained from 115 respondents in three local government areas of Oyo State, Nigeria. Descriptive statistics were used to profile the socio-economic characteristics of sampled households, the working-Leser specification of the almost ideal demand system (AIDS) model was adapted to determine the share of the female spouse in household’s food expenditure, while the logit regression model was used to estimate the determinants of food security among the surveyed households. About 60% of the surveyed households were engaged in farming, and having mean household size and income of 5 members and N49,739 respectively. From the logit results, farm size (0.908, p<0.1), monthly income (2.258, p<0.1), and household involvement in farming (3.979, p<0.5) were found to significantly increased households’ food security status, while large household size (-1.388, p<0.01) and dependency ratio (-2.900, p<0.1) reduced it. Total food consumption expenditure, age and household size significantly influenced female spouse’s contribution to food prepared at home, food eaten away from home and food prepared at home but eaten outside the home. Enacting policies that will improve on households’ access to farmland and increased income were recommended to further enable the female spouse impact more on the food security status of the households.
Keywords: Female spouse; food security; households,