World Food Policy Volume/Issue 2-2/3-1 Fall 2015/Spring 2016 | Page 16
Food Security in Rural Cambodia and Fishing in the Mekong in the Light of Declining Fish Stocks
Figure 3 shows how different
food security indicators in the 25%
income percentile compare between
fishers and non-fishers. It tests for
statistical differences in one-sided mean
comparison tests. For the CSI, rCSI,
and HFIAS lower scores indicate higher
food security. In the FCS a higher score
means higher food security. The rCSI
and HFIAS show significantly less severe
food insecurity in the worst month of
the past year for fishing households. The
FCSs for the different seasons in Figure
3 show a fluctuation of food security
across the year. It is highest directly after
harvest and lowest during the planting
time which takes place in June and July,
~1–2 months after we collected the
data. All indicators show that fishers
face less seasonal food insecurity than
non-fishers, albeit the differences are
statistically insignificant for the CSI and
the FCS in the post rice harvest season.
Figure 4 compares the differences
in calorie and protein intakes between
fishers and non-fishers in the whole
sample and in the 25% income percentile.
The distribution of fishing households
across the lowest 25% income percentile
is roughly similar to that of non-fishing
households (Figure B1 in Appendix B).
This makes the group of fishers and nonfishers in the lowest income percentile
comparable. Figure 4 shows that the
differences in calorie and protein intake
between fishers and non-fishers are even
Figure 3: Comparison of Food Security Indicators in the 25% income percentile
between fishers and non-fishers in Stung Treng, Cambodia. Two-sided t tests for
different variable means between fishers and non-fishers. Sample from 2014 only as
not all indicators are available from both survey waves. Significance Levels: *p<0.1,
**p<0.05, ***p<0.01. Depicted data points are standardized around their mean; rCSI,
CSI and HFIAS refer to the worst month in the past year
16