Linking household access to food and social capital typologies in Phalombe District, Malawi

Food security remains a major sustainability challenge in many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. Food security has numerous determinants that are complex and interlinked, with one of them being social capital. Social capital reflects an individual’s, household’s, or community’s social networks, social interactions, and social support systems that can be mobilized in times of need to maintain, among others, livelihoods or food security. This study aims to further understand how typologies of social capital are associated with household food security in Southern Malawi, with a focus on access to food. We unpack social capital into three typologies, namely bonding, bridging, and linking social capital, and establish which one is most strongly associated with household access to food, and whether this varies by the gender of the household head. To achieve this, we analyze secondary data from 382 households collected through the Malawian Fourth Integrated Household Survey (IHS4), using principal axis factor analysis and logistic regression analysis. Our findings demonstrate that bonding and bridging social capital are associated with better household access to food, while linking social capital was associated with lower household access to food. Bonding social capital was most strongly associated for female-headed households and linking social capital for male-headed households, highlighting that there are differences between such households. This work confirms observations from other related studies in Sub-Saharan Africa exploring the interface of social capital and food security. It also highlights the importance of both acknowledging the gender of the household head and of unpacking social capital into its typologies when considering food security.