Economic Shocks and Household Hunger in Northeastern Nigeria: Evidence from the Nigeria General Household Survey (2023–2024)

Households in northeastern Nigeria face overlapping livelihood, market and environmental shocks, yet the relationship between cumulative exposure and household hunger remains insufficiently documented at the regional level. This study examines shock incidence and severity using the northeastern subsample of the Nigeria General Household Survey Panel 2023–2024. Descriptive evidence is combined with eight ordinary least squares specifications incorporating household characteristics and state indicators. The baseline analytical sample contains 814 households, declining to 723 and 565 in specifications requiring additional covariates. Shock incidence is positively associated with the reported hunger score across all four incidence specifications, with coefficients ranging from 0.361 to 0.437. Severity coefficients range from 0.107 to 0.139 and are also consistently positive and statistically significant. Education is negatively associated with hunger, while non-farm enterprise participation is not statistically significant in the fully adjusted models. Bauchi records lower conditional hunger scores than Adamawa throughout the state-adjusted specifications. Associations with female headship and Yobe residence are sensitive to model specification. Farm working hours are positively associated with hunger in the severity models, potentially reflecting distress labour allocation or low returns rather than a protective relationship. These findings support coordinated food-access protection, livelihood recovery and education policies. Interpretation remains associational because the estimates use a single survey wave and do not establish temporal ordering or eliminate unobserved confounding. Measurement documentation, survey-design adjustment and sample-selection checks are necessary before treating the estimates as population-level evidence.