A Test of the New Variant Famine Hypothesis: Panel Survey Evidence from Zambia

Using People to Cope with the Hunger: Social Networks and Food Transfers Amongst HIV/AIDS Afflicted Households in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

“…The CSI probes the household's recent (preceding month's) experience of implementing a number of food security coping strategies common to a wide range of cultural contexts [34]. The CSI asks the respondent to rate the frequency (never, once a week, two to three times a week, four or more times a week) with which the household experienced food restriction (items 1-9); or attempted food augmentation strategies (items [10][11][12][13][14][15][16]. The items in the CSI were field tested and refined during earlier piloting, and are reproduced in Table 1.…”

“…Thulani has 6 children, all under 16. Ntombithini's children have left the home, but she cares for her grandchild, Ciwe (11) During the second assessment, Joseph dies unexpectedly in a car accident. The widows' finances fall into a state of disarray.…”

“…When household income declines in the presence of HIV/AIDS [14], South African households seem to feel the pinch primarily through declining household food expenditure. This is a marked contrast to other rural sub-Saharan African contexts, where the emphasis has been on how declining agricultural production in the wake of HIV/AIDS affliction is the primary driver of accelerated household-level food insecurity [11,15,16,42,43]. In South Africa, even extremely non-urbanized households are highly reliant on wage remittances and social welfare grants for food security [44].…”

“…And perhaps equally important, but certainly less well understood, is the role played by these informal networks in providing material support in the form of private transfers; that is, gifts of money and food that are exchanged between friends and neighbors [7,8]. Gifts of food in particular may be especially critical, given that accelerated household food insecurity is one of the most well documented negative impacts of HIV/AIDS on household wellbeing [9][10][11]. It is this latter role, outlined in more detail below, which is the subject of the present study.…”

“…Food Insecurity, HIV/AIDS and the Role of Informal Networks Households experiencing chronic illness and mortality of prime-age adults suffer from loss of income and household labor shortages, which adversely affects food security due to declining agricultural productivity [11][12][13] and diminished household purchasing power [14]. The need to address the negative feedbacks between HIV/AIDS and food security has been repeatedly flagged for urgent response at the level of policy and rhetoric [10,12,15,16].…”