Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

This paper attempts to identify both individual-level and societal-level factors that influence the gender gap in food security.  The analysis uses data from the Gallup World Poll, which, starting in 2014, contained FAO’s Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES).  The food insecurity module was administered in 147 countries.  We first conduct an individual level analysis, which controls for individual level characteristics.  We explore whether the gender gap can be explained by observable differences between men and women in education, employment and other individual characteristics.  We next include country level variables that capture whether societal factors can explain away the gender gap in food security.  Societal factors include perceptions of the country’s economic situation, diversity inclusion, political institutions, and whether women are treated with respect.  Lastly, we conduct a cross-country analysis to investigate the country level factors that are associated with cross-country differences in the gender gap in food security.  

Running ordinary least squares, preliminary findings show that the prevalence of food insecurity is 3 percentage points higher for women than for men in the 147 countries used in the analysis.  Restricting the set of countries to the 117 countries where the prevalence of food insecurity is higher for women than for men, food insecurity is 4 percentage points higher for women than for men.  After controlling for differences in employment status, household income, and education, the likelihood of being food insecure becomes 1 percentage point higher for women than for men using all 147 countries and 2 percentage points higher using only the 117 countries.   We fail to find evidence that the gender gap in food security is due to societal factors, including whether the society perceives women as being treated with respect.