Household-Level Water-Energy-Food Nexus Security

Principal Component Analysis constructs security indices for water, energy, and food; pooled OLS models assess urban-rural disparities, while Fixed Effects panel models exploit within-household variation and reveal income elasticity attenuation of 25–75 percent relative to pooled cross-sectional estimates.

Water security improved markedly, while food security remained persistently low with pronounced regional disparities. Machine-building regions consistently outperformed agro-industrial and mixed regions across all nexus dimensions, and urban households enjoyed premiums of 10–26 index points over rural households. Findings underscore the need for integrated, region-specific resource policies and panel data methods to reduce omitted variable bias.