Essays on food security

Essay 1 (state level) develops a composite Food Security Index for West Africa over the period 2002–2019, structured around four key dimensions: availability, access, utilization, and stability. The index is constructed using country-level publicly available data from FAOSTAT. To address issues of dimensionality and indicator weighting, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is applied separately within each pillar to extract the main latent component. Essay 2 (household level) examines how food price volatility affects household welfare in Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Nigeria by combining detailed household survey data with inflation-adjusted market prices. Using fixed-effects models with cluster-robust standard errors, the analysis evaluates the impact of price volatility on three key indicators: Food Consumption Score (FCS), Household Dietary Diversity Score (HDDS), and Reduced Coping Strategies Index (RCSI). Essay 3 (individual level) uses data from the Indonesian Family Life Survey to analyze the role of socioeconomic factors in shaping diet quality. The results highlight education as the most important predictor of a healthy diet. The findings also reveal a rural penalty, whereby individuals in rural areas experience consistently lower food security, regardless of their occupation.