Higher food prices, dwindling purchasing power and socio-economic inequalities are crucial factors promoting under-nutrition in Nigeria. Previous efforts to enhance food consumption and nutrition achieved limited successes as most of the interventions focused largely on food supply with little detailed appraisal of drivers of food demand, especially at the household level. Consequently, this study examines the structure of food demand among households with emphasis on price and income as key variables on which interventions can be built to boost food consumption and nutrition. The study utilises the Nigeria Living Standard Survey and the food price data for 2003/2004 from the National Bureau of Statistics, Nigeria for analyses while employing the double-hurdle model, nutrient deficiency index and a pro-undernourished policy index as analytical tools. A Bayesian (Gibbs sampler) approach is used to estimate the almost ideal demand system (AIDS) model within the framework of the multivariate double-hurdle model. The ensuing demand elasticities indicate food demand patterns characterised by substitutability and complementarity relationships among food subgroups. Approximately 3.99 million people in Nigeria could have been pushed into hunger and calorific under-nutrition as a result of the recent global food price crises. Higher per capita food consumption and accelerated attainment of the Millennium Development Goals on nutrition can be achieved in Nigeria if future economic growth is accompanied by pro-poor income redistribution strategies. A universal transfer strategy or a targeting mechanism with broader scope than the child targeting mechanism being used under the existing conditional cash transfer scheme might be more efficient in reducing under-nutrition among poor households in Nigeria. Although the results suggest that a food stamp scheme would be more cost-effective in raising food consumption and nutrition among the neediest household groups in the country than a cash transfer intervention, its introduction should be considered with some circumspection.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:602483 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Akerele, Dare |
| Publisher | University of Reading |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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