Dietary diversity as a food security indicator

Household food security is an important measure of well-being. Although it may not encapsulate all dimensions of poverty, the inability of households to obtain access to enough food for an active, healthy life is surely an important component of their poverty. Accordingly, devising an appropriate measure of food security outcomes is useful in order to identify the food insecure, assess the severity of their food shortfall, characterize the nature of their insecurity (for example, seasonal versus chronic), predict who is most at risk of future hunger, monitor changes in circumstances, and assess the impact of interventions. However, obtaining detailed data on food security status—such as 24- hour recall data on caloric intakes—can be time consuming and expensive and require a high level of technical skill both in data collection and analysis. This paper examines whether an alternative indicator, dietary diversity, defined as the number of unique foods consumed over a given period of time, provides information on household food security. It draws on data from 10 countries (India, the Philippines, Mozambique, Mexico, Bangladesh, Egypt, Mali, Malawi, Ghana, and Kenya) that encompass both poor and middle-income countries, rural and urban sectors, data collected in different seasons, and data on calories acquisition obtained using two different methods. ....[D]ietary diversity would appear to show promise as a means of measuring food security and monitoring changes and impact, particularly when resources available for such measurement are scarce.Food security. ,Poverty. ,Caloric intake. ,India. ,Philippines. ,Mozambique. ,Mexico. ,Bangladesh. ,Egypt. ,Mali. ,Malawi. ,Ghana. ,Kenya. ,Diet Developing countries. ,

Dietary diversity as a food security indicator

Household food security is an important measure of well-being. Although it may not encapsulate all dimensions of poverty, the inability of households to obtain access to enough food for an active, healthy life is surely an important component of their poverty. Accordingly, devising an appropriate measure of food security outcomes is useful in order to identify the food insecure, assess the severity of their food shortfall, characterize the nature of their insecurity (for example, seasonal versus chronic), predict who is most at risk of future hunger, monitor changes in circumstances, and assess the impact of interventions. However, obtaining detailed data on food security status—such as 24- hour recall data on caloric intakes—can be time consuming and expensive and require a high level of technical skill both in data collection and analysis. This paper examines whether an alternative indicator, dietary diversity, defined as the number of unique foods consumed over a given period of time, provides information on household food security. It draws on data from 10 countries (India, the Philippines, Mozambique, Mexico, Bangladesh, Egypt, Mali, Malawi, Ghana, and Kenya) that encompass both poor and middle-income countries, rural and urban sectors, data collected in different seasons, and data on calories acquisition obtained using two different methods. ....[D]ietary diversity would appear to show promise as a means of measuring food security and monitoring changes and impact, particularly when resources available for such measurement are scarce.Food security. ,Poverty. ,Caloric intake. ,India. ,Philippines. ,Mozambique. ,Mexico. ,Bangladesh. ,Egypt. ,Mali. ,Malawi. ,Ghana. ,Kenya. ,Diet Developing countries. ,

How fair is workfare? gender, public works, and employment in rural Ethiopia

The authors use the Ethiopian Rural Household Survey to examine the gender dimensions of public works. They use three rounds of a panel conducted in 1994-95 to explore the determinants of participation in, days worked, wages, and earnings from wage labor, food-for-work (FFW), and self-employment. Then they analyze public works data collected in 1997, together with program data collected in 2003. FFW operates in a similar fashion with other labor markets in Ethiopia where female participation is low. Gender differences are important in the participation decision, but operate differently in different types of labor markets. Better-educated women are more likely to participate in the wage labor market, while higher livestock holdings diminish participation more for women. Females with more schooling are also more likely to participate in FFW. Men’s and women’s participation in FFW and self-employment responds differently to household and community shocks. After controlling for selection in which gender plays an important role, gender disadvantages in the wage labor market and FFW are insignificant. Returns to schooling and height are consistently positive in both wage labor and FFW, suggesting returns to human capital investment, even in the low-skill labor markets of rural Ethiopia. Program characteristics significantly affect participation, with differential effects on men and women. Participation, days worked, wages, and earnings vary according to the type of project. Relative to infrastructure projects, water, social services, and other projects decrease participation probabilities. Distance has a strong negative effect on women’s participation relative to men’s.Labor Policies,Health Economics&Finance,Gender and Development,Environmental Economics&Policies,Public Health Promotion,Environmental Economics&Policies,Health Economics&Finance,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Housing&Human Habitats,Work&Working Conditions

Natural disasters, self-insurance and human capital investment : evidence from Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Malawi

This paper examines the impacts of disasters on dynamic human capital production using panel data from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Malawi. The empirical results show that the accumulation of biological human capital prior to disasters helps children maintain investments in the post-disaster period. Biological human capital formed in early childhood (long-term nutritional status) plays a role of insurance with resilience to disasters by protecting schooling investment and outcomes, although disasters have negative impacts on investment. In Bangladesh, children with more biological human capital are less affected by the adverse effects of floods, and the rate of investment increases with the initial human capital stock in the post-disaster recovery process. In Ethiopia and Malawi, where droughts are rather frequent, exposure to highly frequent droughts in some cases reduces schooling investment but the negative impacts are larger among children embodying less biological human capital. Asset holdings prior to the disasters, especially the household's stock of intellectual human capital, also helps maintain schooling investments at least to the same degree as the stock of human capital accumulated in children prior to the disasters.Natural Disasters,Hazard Risk Management,Access to Finance,Economic Theory&Research,Health Monitoring&Evaluation

Natural disasters, self-Insurance, and human capital investment: Evidence from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Malawi

"This paper uses panel data from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Malawi to examine the impacts of disasters on dynamic human capital production. Our empirical results show that accumulation of biological human capital prior to a disaster helps children maintain investments during the post-disaster period. Biological human capital formed in early childhood (for example, good long-term nutritional status) helps insure resilience to disasters by protecting schooling investments and outcomes, even though disasters have negative impacts on the actual investments (for example, by destroying schools). In Bangladesh, children with more biological human capital are less adversely affected by flood, and the rate of investment increases with the initial human capital stock during the post-disaster recovery process. In Ethiopia and Malawi, where droughts are relatively frequent, repeated drought exposure reduces schooling investments in some cases, with larger negative impacts seen among children who embody less biological human capital. Asset holdings prior to disaster (especially intellectual human capital stock in the household) also help maintain schooling investments to at least the same degree as the stock of human capital accumulated in the children prior to the disaster. Our results suggest that as the frequency of natural disasters increases due to global warming, the insurance value of investments in child nutrition will increase. Public investments in child nutrition therefore have the potential to effectively protect long-term human capital formation among children who are vulnerable to natural disasters." from authors' abstractDisasters, Human capital, Nutrition, Schooling, Self-insurance, Poverty reduction, Social protection, Shocks, Asset dynamics, Education,

Risks, ex-ante actions, and public assistance: Impacts of natural disasters on child schooling in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Malawi

"This paper uses panel data from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Malawi to examine the impacts of natural disasters on schooling investments, with a particular focus on the roles of ex-ante actions and ex-post responses. We find that the importance of ex-ante actions depends on disaster risks and the likelihood of public assistance, potentially creating substitution between the two actions. We find that higher future probabilities of disaster increase the likelihood of agents holding more human capital and/or livestock relative to land; this asset-portfolio effect is significant in disaster-prone areas. Our empirical results support the roles of both ex-ante and ex-post (public assistance) responses in coping with disasters, but we see interesting variations across countries. In Ethiopia, public assistance plays a more important role than ex-ante actions in mitigating the impact of shocks on child schooling. In contrast, Malawi households rely more on private ex-ante actions than on public assistance. The Bangladesh example shows that active roles are played by both ex-ante and ex-post actions. These observations are consistent with our findings on the relationship between ex-ante actions and disaster risks. Our results also show that among ex-ante actions, human capital accumulated in the household prior to disasters helps mitigate the negative effects of a disaster in both the short and long runs." from authors' abstractNatural disasters, Ex-ante actions, Ex-post responses, Human capital investment, Poverty reduction, Social protection, Gender, Childcare and work,

Reducing child undernutrition

How rapidly will child undernutrition respond to income growth? This study explores that question using household survey data from 12 countries. In addition, data on the undernutrition rates since the 1970s available from a cross-section of countries are employed in this investigation. Both forms of analysis yield similar results. Income increases at household and national levels imply similar rates of reduction in undernutrition. Using these estimates and better-than-historical income growth rates, we find that the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving the levels of child underweight by 2015 is unlikely to be met through income growth alone. What is needed is a balanced strategy of income growth and investment in more direct interventions to accelerate reductions in undernutrition.Food security. ,Income Developing countries. ,Malnutrition. ,Children Nutrition. ,

The challenge of hunger: The 2008 Global Hunger Index

"With high food prices threatening the food security of millions of vulnerable households around the world, hunger and malnutrition are back in the headlines. The world is making only slow progress in reducing food insecurity, according to the Global Hunger Index (GHI). Some regions—in particular South and Southeast Asia, the Near East and North Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean—have made significant headway in combating hunger and malnutrition since 1990, but in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, the GHI remains high. Moreover, progress in Sub-Saharan Africa since 1990 has been marginal. The GHI is a tool developed by IFPRI for regularly tracking the state of global hunger and malnutrition. This year's index reflects data until 2006—the most recent available global data—and does not yet take account of the latest changes in the world food system, in which a number of factors are converging to raise prices for agricultural commodities to their highest levels in decades. Food prices appear likely to remain high in the near term, leading to food and nutrition insecurity for poor people around the globe. In this risky and changing environment, the GHI highlights key trends and the geographic areas of greatest vulnerability." from TextHunger, Undernutrition, Child mortality, Malnutrition in children, Food availability, Indicators, HIV/AIDS, Conflict, war, Developing countries, Transitional economies, Countries in transition, malnutrition, measurement, evaluation,

Famine in Ethiopia: policy implications of coping failure at national and household levels

Famines Ethiopia., Droughts Government policy Ethiopia., Food supply Ethiopia.,

The world's most deprived: Characteristics and causes of extreme poverty and hunger

Poverty, Poor, Statistics, Hunger,