Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Millennium Development Goal 1 sought to reduce the proportion of people in the world living is conditions of dire poverty including hunger. Although substantial achievements were made, poverty-related food insecurity, popularly known as ‘hunger’continues to have a significant grip on Sub-Saharan Africa. The 2015 report of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) indicates that the number of people suffering from food insecurity in Sub-Saharan Africa increased from 176 million in 1990 – 1992 to 220 million in 2014 – 2016. Food insecurity in Sub-Saharan Africa has persevered because of unsustainable macroeconomic and adverse environmental conditions that not only suppress labour market earnings but also perpetuate episodes of food insecurity among non-trivial proportions of the Sub-Saharan African population. On the one hand, the paucity of a social safety net in Sub-Saharan Africa has heightened all elements of poverty but on the other hand, it has induced many households to consider other coping strategies to supplement labour income in offsetting various household expenses such as education, health care, housing, and food costs. One such coping strategy is remittances paid to households by family members working outside of the household sphere. However, the receipt of remittances is not pervasive in the region. The 2008-2009 AfroBarometer survey revealed that about 19 percent of Sub-Saharan Africa households received migrants’ remittances. Furthermore, the survey reveals that 49 percent of remittance-receiving households had one or more episodes of being unable to purchase safe and nutritious food for consumption in the previous 12 months, i.e., they were food insecure. This paper analyzes the impact of time lag in remittance receipts on food security status of non-migrating households in twenty Sub-Saharan African countries. Multinomial logistic modeling was used to analyze data drawn from the 2008-2009 AfroBarometer survey. The empirical findings indicate that the risk of being severely food insecure compared to being food secure is about 46 percent lower for households that receive remittances at least once a month relative to households that receive remittances less than once a year. In other words, remittances received at shorter time intervals improve food security status of recipient households.