A three-component decomposition of food poverty dynamics: application with data from Cameroon

The paper decomposes household food poverty changes over the period 2001–2014 in Cameroon using three waves of the Cameroon Household Consumption Surveys. Specifically, the paper employs the FGT class of poverty measures to profile food poverty over the periods under review and a Shapley value-based decomposition to quantify the contributions of the growth, redistribution, and mobility components to changes in food poverty. The results reveal that over the period 2001–2014, the incidence of food poverty dropped significantly by 9.1 percentage points. Results also show that food poverty is more prevalent, deeper, and more severe in rural areas compared to urban areas. Furthermore, we observed that over the period 2001–2014, rural households experienced an increase in the incidence, depth, and severity of food poverty, while urban households experienced a decrease in these food poverty indices. The decomposition results further indicate that over the period 2001–2014, the three components contributed to reducing the incidence of food poverty, with the intra-zonal growth component recording the highest contribution. The findings suggest that inclusive economic growth policies should be prioritized to ensure broad-based benefits, particularly for vulnerable populations. Redistribution efforts need to be strengthened, focusing on targeted interventions like cash transfers and social safety nets to reduce the severity of food poverty.