With the ongoing changes in climate, household food insecurity is likely to be more widespread in most small-holder and subsistence farm households in sub-Saharan Africa. However, the existence and extent of gendered household food security—or lack thereof—remains unclear.

Abstract: In this paper, we examine the relative influence of individual decisions on joint household decisions, and whether and to what extent joint choices are more or less patient than individual choices in households. We find that both spouses have a significant influence on joint decisions, whereas husbands on average have a stronger influence than wives. Moreover, we find a substantial share of choice shifts from individual to joint household decisions, i.e. joint decisions are either more patient or more impatient than both individual choices.

Abstract: Gendered food security gaps between female- and male-headed households (FHHs and MHHs) can be decomposed into two sets of components: those explained by observable differences in levels of resource use, and those due to unobserved differences affecting the returns to the resources used. Employing exogenous switching ordered probit and binary probit regression models, this paper examines the gendered food security gap and its causes in rural Malawi.

Abstract: This paper explores the link between the gender of a household head and food security in rural Kenya. The results show that the food security gap between male-headed households (MHHs) and female-headed households (FHHs) is explained by their differences in observable and unobservable characteristics. FHHs’ food security status would have been higher than it is now if the returns (coefficients) on their observed characteristics had been the same as the returns on the MHHs’ characteristics.