Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to attempt to investigate farmer's positional concerns in rural China, and how the positional concerns correlate with household expenditures on visible goods.

Design/methodology/approach: The authors conduct a survey-based experiment to measure farmers' positional concerns, and employ econometric models to examine the determinants of the degree of positional concern and how the positional concern affects household expenditures on visible goods.

With the ongoing changes in climate, household food insecurity is likely to be more widespread in most small-holder and subsistence farm households in sub-Saharan Africa. However, the existence and extent of gendered household food security—or lack thereof—remains unclear.

With ongoing climate change, food insecurity is likely to become more widespread in most small-holder and subsistence farm households in sub-Saharan Africa. However, the existence and extent of gendered food (in)security remains unclear. This study extends existing knowledge by assessing gender inequality in food (in)security amongst small-holder farm households in urban and rural areas of South Africa. To do so, we use the gender of the head of household in a treatment effects framework.

Abstract: Gendered food security gaps between female- and male-headed households (FHHs and MHHs) can be decomposed into two sets of components: those explained by observable differences in levels of resource use, and those due to unobserved differences affecting the returns to the resources used. Employing exogenous switching ordered probit and binary probit regression models, this paper examines the gendered food security gap and its causes in rural Malawi.

Abstract: This paper explores the link between the gender of a household head and food security in rural Kenya. The results show that the food security gap between male-headed households (MHHs) and female-headed households (FHHs) is explained by their differences in observable and unobservable characteristics. FHHs’ food security status would have been higher than it is now if the returns (coefficients) on their observed characteristics had been the same as the returns on the MHHs’ characteristics.