thesis

Different ways to access food and their relationship to household food security in coastal Kenya and Mozambique

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This thesis concentrates on the access component of food security by assessing how these different ways to access food (purchasing, households’ own food production and receiving food as gifts) are related to household food security in coastal Kenya and Mozambique.
The analysis is based on a household survey conducted among 1130 households in rural and urban coastal communities in these two countries. The research questions aim to shed light on i) the likelihood of households to consume fish and meat in the studied coastal communities, ii) the proportions of food that come from purchasing, households’ own food production and food gifts from others, as well as iii) the level of food security in the studied communities.
Based on quantitative data analysis, the results show that i) households were significantly more likely to consume fish than meat in all subset except urban Kenya, ii) purchasing was the main way to access food in all the studied communities, and iii) Kenyan households were significantly more food secure than Mozambican households but no significant difference existed between urban and rural households. As for the interplay between food security and the three ways to access food, the
analysis showed significant relationships in some cases.
In rural Mozambique, food secure households bought a significantly larger proportion of their starch than food insecure households, whereas in rural Kenya, the pattern was the opposite. This indicates that access was obtained in different ways in these two countries. In Mozambique, the food secure gained access to food mainly
by purchasing it, while in Kenya, purchasing seems to be a result of not having access to food by the means of households’ own food production.
Food gifts were a significantly more common way to access food in Mozambique compared to Kenya. Food gifts can be seen as a form of social capital, and the findings of this thesis indicate that social capital is more prominent in an economically poorer and less food secure country. These results can increase the understanding policy makers and practitioners have about how people access food in these coastal communities and how different ways to obtain access interplay with people’s food security situation, which can guide policy and practise towards better food security.

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2 October 2017

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Patterns of Subjective Wellbeing in Coastal Kenya and Mozambique and Factors Affecting It

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This thesis explores patterns of subjective wellbeing in coastal communities of Kenya and Mozambique, using household survey data from Sustainable Poverty Alleviation from Coastal Ecosystem Services (SPACES) project. Subjective wellbeing studies how a person evaluates their life. Relative frequency of satisfaction scores were compared between different genders, age categories and sites. Similarly, relative frequency of ecosystem services, money and job were compared between gender and sites. Survey answers were converted into binary format (present/absent) using 28 codes and analyzed using multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) and hierarchical clustering analysis (HCA) to reveal how groups of respondents explain their subjective wellbeing.
Data confirmed the existence of differences in subjective wellbeing between respondents of different gender, age, and between study sites. A conceptual framework combining capability approach and wellbeing framework was designed to evaluate results from HCA. Women respondents were more satisfied than men. People living in urban areas were more dissatisfied and satisfaction varied with age for both genders. Basic needs contributed to the wellbeing of both satisfied and dissatisfied respondents.
Money and job were the most frequently mentioned among dissatisfied respondents. Satisfied respondents focused on general basic needs, health, friends, spouse acceptance and religion. Finally, I found that men related to the material and relational dimension of wellbeing, while women to the relational dimension only, which points to gender – specific cultural values and individual perceptions. Despite the fact that ecosystem services have direct impact on human wellbeing, they were only rarely mentioned by the respondents, however, money was the mechanism used by respondents to access ecosystem services.

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Investigating patterns of subjective wellbeing in Kenya and Mozambique

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Early in June at the Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC), Nicole Reid successfully presented her  masters thesis on “Patterns of Subjective Wellbeing in Coastal Kenya and Mozambique and Factors Affecting It”. Nicole Reid was part of the Master’s program Social-Ecological Resilience for Sustainable Development at the SRC.

For her thesis, Nicole explored the subjective wellbeing data collected during the household survey in Kenya and Mozambique. Wellbeing is multidimensional and consists of three dimensions, the material, the relational, and the subjective. Material wellbeing is made up of material resources like money, clothing, fish, or food.  Relational wellbeing is composed of social relationships and personal relationships one has. The subjective dimension is about how people evaluate their lives in regards to their material resources, their social relationships, their role in society, and their cultural values and beliefs.

From here analysis Nicole found that:

  • Women respondents were generally more satisfied with their lives than men. […]

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16 June 2017

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