Household resilience and mitigating strategies to conflicts and shocks: evidence from household data in Uganda and Malawi

We examine household food security resilience to conflict and shock in Uganda and Malawi using data from the Household Living Standards Measurement Survey. We collect data on resilience components such as education, asset ownership, dwelling characteristics, water access, and sanitation facilities. Principal component analysis is used to generate factor weights for constructing the Resilience Capacity Index, which measures overall household resilience capacity and individual resilience components. The resilience capacity is then used in regression models to assess its mitigating effects on food security during conflicts and shocks. Our results indicate that resilience capacity significantly reduces the adverse effects of conflict and shock on food security. In Malawi, household head education contributes most to food security, while in Uganda, water access is the most critical component. In Malawi, water access resilience diminishes the impact of conflict, sanitation resilience reduces the impacts of flooding, and dwelling characteristics lessen the effects of drought, although the effect size is small. In Uganda, asset ownership resilience mitigates the impacts of drought, while sanitation resilience reduces the adverse effects of conflict. These findings highlight the importance of different resilience components in enhancing food security under various adverse conditions.