ABSTRACT:

This study analyzed socioeconomic determinant of food insecurity among integrated households inMaiduguri Metropolis, Borno State, Nigeria. It covered 15 and five peripheral wards of MaiduguriMetropolitan and Jere LGAs respectively. A two-stage sampling procedure was adopted to drawrespondents for the study; Purposive selection of ten large concentrations of integrated household wardsand proportionate random selection of 376 integrated household. Both primary and secondary data wereused for the study. Descriptive and inferential statistics were employed to analyze the data collected. Thedescriptive statistics used were frequency tables, percentages, mean and standard deviation whileinferential statistics included Tobit regression analysis. The socioeconomic characteristics of integratedhouseholds’ revealed majority (97.9%) male dominance, with 59.89 years average age of the householdheads. The majority of the household heads (94.40%) were married. High proportion of household heads(62.00%) attained Islamic education. Those that practiced agricultural production, as primaryoccupation constitutes only 33.51% and 61.54% of these households were sustained by this occupationfor less than 4 months. Only 3.31% of the households were food secure and sustained by own productionfor 12 months and above. Income diversified households composed 3.9%. The mean duration ofhouseholds stay in the community was 29.4 years with 43% of households having 29 – 43 years. Theresults of influences of socioeconomic variables on the household food insecurity revealed that all theseven (7) variables have various degrees of effects on integrated household food insecurity level except formarried heads and years in education as indicated by their levels of insignificance. However, age and sexare the only variable with positive coefficients 0.2363 and 9.04e-06 respectively. The coefficient forhousehold duration of stay was significant at 5%. Nevertheless, significant disparities exist betweensamples means difference of food insecurity levels and sample means difference of dependency ratio ofintegrated households in the study area. Households with larger dependency ratios were likely to beseverely food insecure.