Labour migration and food security in rural Mozambique: Do agricultural investment, asset building and local employment matter?

Abstract

AbstractConnections between labour migration and food security of left‐behind households are still poorly understood. Using data from two waves of a longitudinal survey conducted among ever‐married women in rural Mozambique, we employ multi‐level ordered logit and negative binomial regressions to examine over time three possible pathways linking men's migration and its economic success to food security of left‐behind households—agricultural investment, household material assets and women's local gainful employment. Our analyses find a significant positive association between migration's success, proxied by remittances, and food security and show that this association is largely mediated by household's possession of material assets.