Rising food prices and undernourishment: A cross-country inquiry |
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| Affiliation: | 1. FAO of the UN, Viale delle Terme di Caracalla, 00153 Roma, Italy;2. Universidad Católica, Depto. De Economía Agraria, Av. Vicuña Mackenna 4860, Macul, Santiago, Chile;3. University of York, Centre for Health Economics, Heslington, York YO10 5DD, UK;4. University of Rome Tor Vergata, Faculty of Economics, Via Columbia 2, 00133 Rome, Italy;1. College of Economics & Management, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070 Hubei, PR China;2. Department of Economics & Development Studies, University of Swat, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan;3. College of Public Administration & Land Resource Management, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, Hubei, PR China;1. Department of Agriculture Food and Resource Economics, Rutgers University, NJ, USA;2. Institute of Environment and Sustainability, University of California, Los Angeles, USA;3. Development Research Group, The World Bank, USA;4. Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California, Berkeley, USA |
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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. |
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