Lisa C. Smith

CAN FAO's MEASURE OF CHRONIC UNDERNOURISHMENT BE STRENGTHENED?

In its Sixth World Food Survey released at the 1996 World Food Summit, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) reported that 841 million people in developing countries are chronically undernourished. This number and its country- and regional-level disaggregations have proved tremendously useful to countless aid agencies and researchers. In the context of a recent wave of new nationally-representative household food consumption and expenditure data, this paper examines the estimation methodology underlying this food insecurity indicator, which relies on national aggregate measures of food availability and distribution. The paper finds that the measure is methodologically biased toward national food availability and does not fully account for the effects of poverty—the most widespread cause of food insecurity in developing countries. The implications of this bias for use of the indicator in cross-country comparisons of food insecurity and for tracking changes in it over time are drawn out. The paper concludes by arguing that the time has come to review the potential for employing the new household survey data for strengthening the empirical foundations of the FAOs measure of chronic undernourishment.

Public Policy, Markets and Household Coping Strategies in Bangladesh: Avoiding a Food Security Crisis Following the 1998 Floods

Abstract At their peak, the 1998 floods covered two-thirds of Bangladesh, causing severe damage to the major rice crop and threatening the food security of tens of millions of households. In this paper, we first highlight the contribution of government policy interventions, including trade liberalization in the early 1990s, to stabilization of rice markets during and after the flood. Then, using a panel data set covering 750 households in three rounds over a 13-month period, we analyze impacts of the flood on household assets, consumption and nutritional outcomes. Finally, we present empirical estimates of the contribution of rice market stabilization and government transfers to household food consumption.

How Potent Is Economic Growth in Reducing Undernutrition? What Are the Pathways of Impact? New Cross‐Country Evidence*

This article uses panel data from 63 developing countries over the period 1970–96 to explore the relationship between income growth and child undernutrition rates. It has two broad objectives. The first is to determine how strong the relationship is whether it is causal and the magnitude of the contribution the income growth has made to reductions in child undernutrition over the past 25 years. The second broad objective is to examine the specific pathways through which income growth affects undernutrition. The article represents the first effort to merge child undernutrition rates by year for multiple years with the various determinants of child undernutrition. It thus allows for estimations that take into account country-specific characteristics. Also for the first time the study (1) tests for the endogeneity of potential determinants (2) calculates the historical contribution of longrun income growth to reductions in child undernutrition and (3) identifies the pathways through which income growth affects undernutrition. Section II discusses the determinants of child nutritional status from a conceptual standpoint. Section III describes the variables employed the data and the estimation strategy. The results are presented in Section IV and Section V concludes with a discussion of the implications of the results for policies to reduce child undernutrition. (excerpt)

How important is improving food availability for reducing child malnutrition in developing countries

Do increases in the food supply per person in a country, i.e., national food availability, contribute substantially to reductions in malnutrition among its children? This paper sets out to answer this controversial question using panel data from 63 developing countries over 1970-1996. This paper gives evidence in support of a statistically significant and strong positive impact of national food availability on child nutrition, finding that increased food supplies have resulted in significant reductions in malnutrition since the 1970s despite population increases over the period. However, per-capita food supplies have a declining marginal impact: their effect is quite strong for countries with very low food availability (e.g., most countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia), but weak or non-existent for those with high levels (e.g., most countries in the Near East and North Africa). Further, non-food factors, such as womens education and status and the quality of health environments, are also important determinants of childrens nutritional status. Depending on the state offood availability in any particular geographic area and relative costs, these factors may merit greater priority in policies to reduce malnutrition.