Rising food prices and undernourishment: A cross-country inquiry

Anríquez, G. and Daidone, S. and Mane, E. (2013) Rising food prices and undernourishment: A cross-country inquiry. Food Policy, 38. pp. 190-202.

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Abstract

Households’ welfare in developing countries has been hit by dramatic food prices increases which occurred between 2005 and 2008. In this paper, we adopt a partial equilibrium approach to analyze the short-time effects of a staple food price increase on nutritional attainments, as a measure of welfare. The analysis consists of first approximating complete food-demand systems and then performing household level micro-simulations. Instead of focusing on a single country profile, we provide a more complete snapshot by comparing the evidence through a cross-country assessment made possible by the use of nationally representative household surveys. Comparability is assured by the adoption of the same methodological choices in the treatment of the micro data. We find that food price spikes not only reduce the mean consumption of dietary energy, but also worsen the distribution of food calories, further deteriorating the nutritional status of populations. We also discovered that access to agricultural land plays a significant role in ensuring adequate nutritional attainments in rural areas, and surprisingly, even in urban areas.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Food prices; Food policy; Calories intake; Demand system; Household surveys
Author Affiliation:	FAO of the UN, Viale delle Terme di Caracalla, 00153 Roma, Italy
Subjects:	Social Sciences > Agricultural Economics Postharvest Management > Food Technology
Divisions:	General
Depositing User:	Mr Siva Shankar
Date Deposited:	09 Apr 2013 04:47
Last Modified:	09 Apr 2013 04:47
Official URL:	http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2012.02.010
URI:	http://eprints.icrisat.ac.in/id/eprint/10227

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