Household food insecurity and coping strategies in a poor rural community in Malaysia

Abstract

This cross-sectional study assessed household food insecurity among low-income rural communities and examined its association with demographic and socioeconomic factors as well as coping strategies to minimize food insecurity. Demographic, socioeconomic, expenditure and coping strategy data were collected from 200 women of poor households in a rural community in Malaysia. Households were categorized as either food secure (n=84) or food insecure (n=116) using the Radimer/Cornell Hunger and Food Insecurity instrument. T-test, Chi-square and logistic regression were utilized for comparison of factors between food secure and food insecure households and determination of factors associated with household food insecurity, respectively. More of the food insecure households were living below the poverty line, had a larger household size, more children and school-going children and mothers as housewives. As food insecure households had more school-going children, reducing expenditures on the children's education is an important strategy to reduce household expenditures. Borrowing money to buy foods, receiving foods from family members, relatives and neighbors and reducing the number of meals seemed to cushion the food insecure households from experiencing food insufficiency. Most of the food insecure households adopted the strategy on cooking whatever is available at home for their meals. The logistic regression model indicates that food insecure households were likely to have more children (OR=1.71; p<0.05) and non-working mothers (OR=6.15; p<0.05), did not own any land (OR=3.18; p<0.05) and adopted the strategy of food preparation based on whatever is available at their homes (OR=4.33; p<0.05). However, mothers who reported to borrow money to purchase food (OR=0.84; p<0.05) and households with higher incomes of fathers (OR=0.99; p<0.05) were more likely to be food secure. Understanding the factors that contribute to household food insecurity is imperative so that effective strategies could be developed and implemented.

Association between Nutritional Status, Food Insecurity and Frailty among Elderly with Low Income

“…In a study among low income community in Sabak Bernam, percentage of households experiencing food insecurity is above 50% (Shariff & Khor 2008). The percentage of low income households in the city that have food insecurity was higher (66.6%) compared with those in rural areas of 58% (Sharif & Ang 2001).…”

Food security measurement in rural households: the case of indigenous communities in Sierra Tarahumara, Mexico

“…For their part, the work of Chagomoka et al (2016), carried out in Ghana, pointed out that households used coping strategies more frequently, such as skipping meals the whole day, borrowing food or money to buy food, consuming seed stock and purchasing food on credit. Shariff and Khor (2008) found, in a rural community in…”

“…The coping strategy questionnaire was created using different bibliographic references (Maxwell and Caldwell, 2008;Shariff and Khor, 2008;Ngidi and Hendriks, 2014;Gupta et al 2015).…”

“…Unfortunately, food insecurity has been shown to affect many dimensions of well-being as a form of deprivation (Shariff and Khor, 2008).…”

Coping Strategies Adopted by Urban Poor to Ameliorate Food Insecurity: Case of United States, Belize and India

“…The first strategy stated by Kabeer (1990) could be categorized as negative and second as positive strategy (except when children are drawn to work) [24]. Castaneda et al (2000) and Shariff and Khor (2008) also found that employed members were drawn to more odd jobs during food insecurity in order to increase resources [25,26]. These strategies could be considered positive as they increase the household resources to buy food and thus ameliorate food insecurity.…”