Food Insecurity and Associated Socioeconomic Factors: Application of Rasch and Binary Logistic Models with Household Survey Data in Three Megacities in Indonesia

The combination of rapid economic growth and urbanization, market dependency for food purchases, disposal of a significant portion of income to obtain food, and diverse dietary needs increase an urban household’s vulnerability to food insecurity. Hence, it is crucial to focus on urban food insecurity. Achieving urban food security is one of the development challenges in the twenty first century in most developing countries, including Indonesia. To examine this issue, a survey was conducted in Jakarta, Bandung, and Surabaya. The experience-based food security scale was adapted to measure the food security status in the study area. This scale assesses food insecurity over a 12-month recall period. This study aims to explore the food insecurity status and examine the factors that affect urban food insecurity of low-income households in three megacities. The random sampling technique was applied to collected data from 150 households of selected residential areas through paper-based questionnaire survey. Subsequently, the Rasch model was used to measure the food security status, finding that 27.4% of the participants were food insecure. A binary logistic regression was employed to identify main factors that influence the low-income urban household’s food security status in the study area. The significant predictors of urban food insecurity were also identified, including income, employment status, dependency ratio, a respondent’s urbanization status, and home ownership status. Therefore, an effective cross-sectoral policy intervention monitoring is needed to cope with the food insecurity issue both in regional and national levels of the country.