Analysis of the Impact of Income Diversification Strategies on Food Security Status of Rural Households in Bangladesh: A Case Study of Rajshahi District

The strategy of income diversification has significant implication on the food security status of the rural farming households in Bangladesh. Income diversification has been identified as essential strategy for raising income and reducing rural poverty. The level and type of income diversification depends on the accessibility and availability of different income sources. Similarly the status of food security depends on average Kcal per day consumed by all members of a household. This paper examines the impact of income diversification on food security status of the rural farming households in Rajshahi district. For this purpose a survey was conducted in district Rajshahi of Northern Bangladesh covering three Upazilas with 138 households. The Simpson Index of Diversity (SID), Food Security Index and Binary Logistic Regression model are employed to analyze the data. To estimate the model data has been collected from sample households from three upazilas – Puthia, Paba and Mohonpur. The Simpson Index of Diversity (SID) is used to measure the extent of income diversification and the Food Security Index is used to measure the household food security status. The results of SID revealed that diversification of income sources (SID = 0.25) is very low and the value of the food security index is 0 to 1. It is also found that the mean value of FSI is 0.91 for the food insecure households whereas 1.06 is the mean value of FSI of food secure households. Three factors are found to be statistically significant which are age of household head, educational status of household and household size. The analysis found that income diversification has positive but insignificant impact on household food security status in the study area. Finally, the obtained results have important policy implications which imply that programs targeted to engage people in other income generating activities would augment their income sources which are made to increase the food security status of household level in Bangladesh.