Coping strategies are various activities households employ to avoid hunger and meet food requirements (Hendriks, 2002). Most coping strategies engaged by urban food insecure households are attempts to manage limited accessible food resources (Maxwell, 1998).
Coping strategies can be sub-divided into risk management strategies; risk coping strategies; household or kinship strategies; household strategies; individual strategies and consumption related coping strategies.
Risk management strategies such as income diversification address the risk associated with the income earning process and are aimed at income smoothing (Dercon, 2001).
Risk management strategies aim to prevent the experience of disaster resulting from shocks that destabilise access to food. Risk coping strategies are strategies that deal with the consequences of income risk and aim to smooth household consumption (Dercon, 2001). These include relying on savings, drawing on social networks for assistance, earning extra income through selling labour and temporary migration (Dercon, 2001).
Coping strategies fall into two broad categories: “income raising strategies” aimed at increasing income to purchase food and livelihood resources and “consumption modifying strategies” that aim to prevent the depletion of food and non-food items (Devereux, 1993: 57). The contribution of income raising strategies to household food security is discussed comprehensively in the sections that follow. Table 2.11 presents some categories of household coping strategies and discusses some of the implications of their use on the household.
Table 2.11 Categories of coping strategies, examples and implications (Maxwell, 1995; Corbett, 1988; Maxwell et al., 2003)
MAIN CATEGORY SUB-CATEGORY EXAMPLES IMPLICATIONS
Community or
kinship strategies Community
organisations. Worker organisations, religious groups, labour unions.
Urbanisation has weakened kinship ties, but organisations in urban settings mobilise for common resources, increases resilience of livelihood systems to shocks. These are social assets of the urban poor for mutual assistance.
Inter-household transfers.
Reciprocal exchange such gifts, remittances, borrowing and lending.
Gifts and remittances provide economic support in times of need. Remittances used for household consumption, increases household food security. Money is borrowed as informal credit for micro enterprise and individual consumption needs.
Non-market
exchanges. Babysitting, washing
clothes, borrowing maize. Favours are bestowed with a view to be repaid in various ways. Services are rendered in return for food.
Household Strategies Income related strategies
Income diversification, informal trading, migration, casual labour.
Diversifying sources of income to meet needs of household indicates vulnerability to food and livelihood insecurity. Informal activities such as street trading may increase vulnerability to food insecurity, migration increases susceptibility to HIV infection.
Income pooling. Susu groups or the stokvel
within community. The collecting money with the aim of purchasing bulk food at the end of a certain time period. Money collected could be lent out on interest or used to buy household items and clothing. Economic safety net that increases well being and per-capita income.
Expenditure reduction.
Cut spending on services, remove children from school.
Reducing expenses (health, education), compromises future human capital as poor health and low education are determinants of low household income.
Reducing number
of dependents. Temporary or long-term migration, sending members to live with relatives or foster care.
Reducing the „number of mouths to feed‟ means taking children out of school, breaking up the family unit. Long-term migration may lead to HIV infection and increasing the burden of care and depleting scares household resources through the impact of AIDS.
Commercialisation of ritual
ceremonies.
Making money from birth
ceremonies etc. Making money from traditional ceremonies such as birth ceremonies encourages unemployed poor women to have more children to benefit materially.
Distress sales. Selling assets such as furniture and livestock, equipment.
Strategy of last resort erodes the asset base and reduces resilience of households to future shocks such as death. Assets prevent the use of erosive coping strategies and hence destitution.
Individual Strategies Multiple sexual
partners. Multiple partners or „sugar
daddies‟. Women in townships engage in consumption sex for material gain whereas women in informal settlements use sex for subsistence or survival (food and childcare). At risk for violence, abuse and HIV infection.
Commercial sex. Selling sex for money. Isolation from community or HIV infection.
Petty crime. Stealing and robbery. Going to prison, getting caught n the „dark economy‟.
Begging. Children at risk of abuse, crime, drugs and destructive behaviours such as sniffing glue.
The categories of coping strategies presented in table 2.11 are often carried out simultaneously, depending on the circumstances of the household. Devereux (2001:
144) asserts that coping strategies are usually adopted in numerous layers; several strategies are implemented at once and pursued until conditions improve or until the household is completely destitute.
Hossain (2005) lists seven strategies that women in Dhaka City use for household survival. Among these, engaging in informal economic activities, using kinship as social capital and establishing relationships with local leaders were the most important in meeting their needs (Hossain, 2005).
Similarly, Katona-Apte (1998) reports that poor women in Bangladesh have multiple survival strategies geared towards meeting immediate needs and ensuring long-term survival. Women rely on networking with relatives and friends for loans, food and shelter, petty trading, preparing goods for sale and selling their labour. Most strategies in the two studies were carried out simultaneously to cope with food and livelihood insecurity (Katona-Apte, 1998). Moser (1998) reports that households in developing countries engaged in five categories of coping strategies such as reducing spending;
food substitution (substituted vegetables for meat and feeding children water from boiled rice rather than milk); changing eating habits (eating only two meals a day from three); changing buying habits (reducing purchases of cooked and fast food);
and reducing spending on non-food items (reducing spending on medicine, education and transport).
Households exposed to extreme poverty adopt coping mechanisms that are irreversible, eventually disposing of their assets. This has long-term negative impacts on physical, human and social capital (Rogers & Coates 2002). Distress sales of assets such as livestock and equipment, sending children to live with relatives, taking them out of school (diminishing human capital) and migrating to cities or moving between cities (diminishing social capital) are some examples of how poor households cope when faced with destitution (Rogers & Coates, 2002; Gillespie & Loevinsohn 2003, de Klerk et al., 2004).
Community or kinship strategies such as relying on neighbours, friends and using political influence for assistance helps households in mobilising resources and making the most of opportunities that uplift the quality of life (Maxwell et al., 2000). Relying on social networks for help is only useful for minor shocks such as temporary illness, as these networks break down under the pressure of urbanisation and high unemployment levels (Devereux, 2001: 146).
Income pooling in stokvel or rotating credit groups are very important coping strategies for low income households. Dercon (2001) argues that money borrowed from traditional savings groups is often used to buy food for consumption. Dallimore (2003) argues that people in traditional savings groups in KwaZulu-Natal primarily save money for food and school fees. Income pooling is a coping strategy that fosters the use of social capital or household relations while meeting other important household needs.
Income generation is an important coping and adaptive strategy for low income households around the world. Hossain (2005) reports that economic activities such as rickshaw pulling, street vending and operating informal businesses from home were the most important household survival strategy for women. Katona-Apte (1998) reported that access to credit was a very important coping strategy for food and capital for income generating projects. Katona-Apte (1998) also found that women preferred cash loans, compared to other types of aid, that they could use to generate income for small businesses (albeit minimal and irregular amounts) to purchase food.
Engaging in informal economic activities such as petty trading and preparing food for sale are income strategies aimed at increasing cash resources (Shackleton &
Shackleton, 2004). In South Africa, engaging in informal economic activities such as street trading is usually a response to the inability to secure employment in the formal sector (Skinner, 2000a). In this sense, street trading may have initially started as a coping strategy- a response to insufficient food in the household. For many people, informal income generation becomes an adaptive strategy and a permanent means of earning an income. In South Africa, street trading is an easy entry point into the informal sector owing to low capital and low skill requirements (Hendriks, 2002). For this reason it serves as a coping strategy for immediate consumption needs and as an
ongoing strategy that provides irregular, albeit minimal income for food (Lund, 1998).
The following chapter investigates the contribution of informal economic activities or income raising strategies to household food and livelihood security.
Short-term alteration of consumption patterns are usually carried out in conjunction with long-term adaptive strategies. Maxwell et al. (2003) describe four types of consumption coping strategies. These are changes in diet; purchasing less preferred foods or less preferred food substitutes; borrowing or buying food on credit; reducing the number of people to feed and lastly; rationing the food available by reducing portion size or skipping meals (Maxwell et al., 2003). Table 2.12 presents various types of food related coping strategies. Food related coping strategies have severe implications as they deplete the body of nutrients and lead to disease and illness (Maxwell, 1995).
Buying street foods is an important coping strategy for the urban poor in Accra. Cash for purchasing street foods comprises 39 per cent of total household budget of the poorest households compared with 26 per cent of wealthy households (Ruel et al., 1999). Budgeting cash for street foods is a trend also prevalent in Nigeria, where city residents spend up to 50 per cent of their total food expenditure on street foods (International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), 2002). Rationing of food among household members and maternal buffering are also coping strategies used by the urban poor in response to rising food prices (Maxwell et al., 2000). Urban and rural households in South Africa respond to price increases by reducing the number of meals eaten every day and changing the types of foods eaten (Aliber & Modiselle, 2002). Households buy cheaper, low quality substitutes for their normal foods- many of which are also often nutritionally deficient (Aliber & Modiselle, 2002).
For low income households, food and livelihood security is attained through a combination of short-term coping strategies such as consumption altering strategies and long-term strategies (usually income based strategies) such as urban agriculture or livestock keeping (Maxwell, 1995). Grown and Sebstad (1989: 941) argue that the term livelihood systems is more appropriate in analysing poor livelihoods as the term
“refers to the mix of household and survival strategies, developed over a given period
Table 2.12 Food consumption coping strategies (Muthwa, 1994; Maxwell, 1995; Beall & Kanji, 1999; Mallucio et al., 1999; Haddad and Mallucio, 2000; Maxwell et al., 2000; Hendriks, 2002; Hunter, 2002; Gillespie & Loevinsohn, 2003)
Category Sub-category Examples Implications
Food
consumption strategies
Dietary changes. Eating less preferred food and substituting food with low nutritional value.
Eating food that is poor in quality could lead to poor nutritional status and poor health. Children may be stunted (low height for age) or wasted (low weight for age) and have developmental problems and cognitive difficulties in school.
Food deprivation could lead to chronic malnutrition and increased susceptibility to disease in adults. The purchasing and selling of street foods is a coping strategy for food insecure households in Accra, Ghana. Street foods are purchased as they ate cheaper than buying the ingredients for a cooked meal. These are also high in fat and salt and lead to lifestyle diseases such as obesity and diabetes.
Street foods also carry a higher bacterial load and increase stomach complications such as diarrhoea.
HIV infected people and AIDS patients require a greater protein and carbohydrate diet to ward off opportunistic infections. Inadequate nutrition leads to quicker onset of illness, reducing the quality of life. Relying on friends or family for food necessitates the fulfilling of social obligations, which may put women at risk of abuse.
Rationing strategies. Reducing number of meals eaten, eating smaller meals and
skipping entire days without eating.
Maternal buffering. Mother letting her children eat at her own expense.
Purchasing street foods.
Food from vendors.
Buying food on credit. Taking maize and promising to pay with wages or grant.
Relying on assistance. Borrowing money to buy food, exchanging favours on return for food.
Searching for wild food.
Roots, edible plants and small animals.
To attain and maintain secure access to food, the urban poor simultaneously engage in multiple strategies such as engaging in employment; saving money and investing;
changing household consumption patterns; labour and asset pooling; and using social networks or social capital to acquire food (Maxwell, 1998; Beall & Kanji, 1999; McGee
& Firman, 2000; Hossain, 2005). Vulnerable households are forced to adopt these strategies to survive, not to improve the quality of life (Hossain, 2005).