Household Food Insecurity in Urban Slums: A Case Study of Dhaka City, Bangladesh

Poushali BHATTACHARJEE

Master's thesis

Abstract:

Bangladesh is the 10th most densely populated country in the world which put stress on its ability to secure the equal right to food for all group of people irrespective of socioeconomic condition. The National Food Policy of the country declared slum households as one of the most distressed groups in terms of fulfilling the nutritional need. The capital city Dhaka alone is the living place of humongous number (1.06 million) of slum population. The study conducted on 580 households of Dhaka City Corporation area has identified 75.52% of the households as food insecure by comparing their calorie intake with the energy requirement threshold for Bangladesh (2430 Kcal/AE/Day). The majority share of the calorie in their everyday diet plan came mostly from cereals, sugar, oil, and outside meal, which showcased a poor quality of diet. The households spent the lion's share of their monthly expenditure (72.77%) only on food consumption, which compelled to cut off essential nonfood expenditure. The Inverse Hyperbolic Sine transformed Double Hurdle model has been applied, to analyze the determinants of the presence and depth of food insecurity among households, as it accommodates the heteroskedastic, correlated and not normally distributed error. The Per capita monthly income; percentage of food expenditure; diet diversity; household size; sex of household head; number of the female wage earner, children under five years and unemployed person within 15 to 64 years; proportion of adult female member and location of the slum were significant factors determining the food security status of households. Whereas, while exploring the determinants of the depth in food calorie gap among food insecure households, some other factors like wealth index, source of drinking water, overall HH security and migration of HH head from abroad came out as important factors along with the previous factor list except for the sex of the household head. To improve the situation of the slum dwellers, the government should concentrate on more coverage of social safety net programs, legal service provision of water and sanitation and human capital development-oriented program and training primarily focusing the women.

Abstract:

Bangladesh is the 10th most densely populated country in the world which put stress on its ability to secure the equal right to food for all group of people irrespective of socioeconomic condition. The National Food Policy of the country declared slum households as one of the most distressed groups in terms of fulfilling the nutritional need. The capital city Dhaka alone is the living place of humongous number (1.06 million) of slum population. The study conducted on 580 households of Dhaka City Corporation area has identified 75.52% of the households as food insecure by comparing their calorie intake with the energy requirement threshold for Bangladesh (2430 Kcal/AE/Day). The majority share of the calorie in their everyday diet plan came mostly from cereals, sugar, oil, and outside meal, which showcased a poor quality of diet. The households spent the lion's share of their monthly expenditure (72.77%) only on food consumption, which compelled to cut off essential nonfood expenditure. The Inverse Hyperbolic Sine transformed Double Hurdle model has been applied, to analyze the determinants of the presence and depth of food insecurity among households, as it accommodates the heteroskedastic, correlated and not normally distributed error. The Per capita monthly income; percentage of food expenditure; diet diversity; household size; sex of household head; number of the female wage earner, children under five years and unemployed person within 15 to 64 years; proportion of adult female member and location of the slum were significant factors determining the food security status of households. Whereas, while exploring the determinants of the depth in food calorie gap among food insecure households, some other factors like wealth index, source of drinking water, overall HH security and migration of HH head from abroad came out as important factors along with the previous factor list except for the sex of the household head. To improve the situation of the slum dwellers, the government should concentrate on more coverage of social safety net programs, legal service provision of water and sanitation and human capital development-oriented program and training primarily focusing the women.

Keywords

Slum, food insecurity, indicators, determinants, DH model, IHS transformation

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 31. 5. 2019

Thesis defence

• Supervisor: prof. Maria Sassi

Palacký University Olomouc

Faculty of Science

Master programme / field:
Geography / International Development Studies