Testing for household resilience to food insecurity: evidence from Nicaragua

The main goal of this paper is to develop a methodology to quantitatively assess resilience to food insecurity. The developed methodology is applied to Nicaraguan rural households hit by Mitch Hurricane in 1999. The proposed resilience index highlights small landowners and agricultural wage workers as less resilient vis-à-vis other livelihood groups. The analysis shows that the proposed resilience index is a significant determinant of households’ food security and this result is robust across several specifications