THE DETERMINANTS OF GRADE ATTAINMENT IN LOW‐INCOME COUNTRIES: EVIDENCE FROM RURAL BANGLADESH

This paper presents an econometric analysis of the effects of child health on school enrollment and grade attainment in Bungladesh. It improves on past studies in a number of ways mainly by incorporating into its analysis the endogenous nature of child health. The results challenge the conclusions found in the literature. First, it finds that in Bangladesh, a child's health and his/her probability of being enrolled in school are at best weakly related. Second, it shows that once enrolled, nutritional deficiencies retard substantially school progress: Underweight children tend to be in lower grades than well‐fed children of the same age. It is estimated that a one standard deviation improvement in weight‐for‐age would be expected to reduce the grades behind by about 0.25 years or about 13.5 percent of the actual years completed. Finally, the estimates suggest that the weight‐for‐age indicator appears as the best predictor of nutritional status.     

Do home gardens improve the nutrition of rural pre-schoolers in Lesotho?

In this study, the contribution of household gardens to the nutritional status of pre-schoolers in Lesotho was investigated. The anthropometric status of children under five years of age was measured in five randomly selected villages in five districts of Lesotho during November and December 1999. In each district, the nutritional status of an average of 538 children was assessed. Production from household gardens was investigated to determine whether households had access to vegetables throughout the year. Despite a significant association between the presence of home gardens and lower incidences of wasting and underweight, the nutritional status of children in households with or without home gardens in sampled areas is poor. Some 49 per cent of children from households with food gardens were stunted, 29 per cent were underweight, and 24 per cent showed wasting. Many households do not produce enough vegetables rich in vitamin A to meet both their consumption and nutritional needs. Recommendations include intensified production of a wider mix of crops that include starchy crops, vitamin A-rich vegetables and fruit trees to ensure a significant impact on children's nutritional status.     

Identifying the Effects of WIC on Food Insecurity Among Infants and Children

The Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) Program is considered a crucial component of the social safety net in the United States, yet there is limited supporting evidence on the effects of WIC on the nutritional well‐being and food security of infants and young children. Using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, we apply recently developed partial identification methods to jointly account for unobserved counterfactual outcomes and systematic underreporting of WIC participation. Under nonparametric assumptions, we find that WIC reduces the prevalence of child food insecurity by at least 3.6 percentage points (20%).     

Imperfect Competition in German Food Retailing: Evidence from State Level Data

An increase in the level of retail concentration in food markets across Europe has raised concerns about the implications of retail dominance in the food supply. This paper measures oligopoly and oligopsony market power in the German food retail industry and incorporate specific details about the German meat market and the European BSE crisis. In this paper, simultaneous estimates of the degree of oligopoly and oligopsony market power in the German food retail industry are derived by applying a set of monthly state level retail beef and pork marketing data in the federal state of Hessen, Germany, from 1995–2000. Results strongly suggest evidence of retail oligopoly and oligopsony power. Lerner index estimates indicate retail market power accounts for 0.5% to 11% of the retail unit margins of beef and pork.

The non-globalisation of modern food retailing: the case of the failed Coop Norden merger

ABSTRACT

By discussing the creation and subsequent failure of Coop Norden, set up by the Scandinavian consumer co-operatives in 2002 as a common wholesale and food retail enterprise, this article provides insights into the nature of the Scandinavian food retail sector and co-operative enterprises in an era of globalisation. The article combines recent research on the globalisation of retailing with the academic literature on the economic position and development of consumer co-operative enterprises. The article concludes that the failure of Coop Norden can be seen as the natural consequence of two inherent problems: 1. A flawed vision among co-operative managers on how globalisation would impact retailing and 2. A misalignment between Danish, Norwegian and Swedish co-operative agendas. The article is based on comprehensive studies of the internal co-operative archives in Denmark and Norway.     

ASYMMETRIC PRICE TRANSMISSION AND MARKET CONCENTRATION: AN INVESTIGATION INTO FOUR SOUTH AFRICAN AGRO-FOOD INDUSTRIES

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Poverty, Place or Race: Causes of the Retail Gap in Smaller U.S. Cities

In this study we explore the possibility that any or all of three dimensions of the U.S. inner city, central location, relatively low income, and a relatively high percentage of minority residents, correlate with a relative lack of neighborhood retail services, the so-called retail gap. Our empirical analysis is based on zip code level data for 39 U.S. cities with populations from 50 to 225 thousand people. After specifying an empirical model based on hypotheses drawn from the urban economics, urban studies, and urban development literature, we test access to retail services using both geographical density and per capita retail measures. While several results from this study are worthy of discussion, our primary empirical finding is that neighborhoods with high percentages of African-Americans are systematically under-served by retail, all else equal, while Latino, low income, or otherwise centrally located neighborhoods are not. We then test a selection of product categories for retail density, finding some differing results by product category but verifying our more general conclusions for most products. Finally, we find that grocery stores have significantly smaller scale in African-American communities, a finding that provides partial support for the urban “food desert” hypothesis. These findings suggest that the inner city retail gap may be more of a racial than geographic issue, and that increased emphasis on racial composition is warranted in the retail development policies applied to smaller U.S. cities.     

Fattening children or fattening farmers? School milk in Britain, 1921–19411

Fattening children or fattening farmers? School milk in Britain, 1921‐1941. The introduction of school milk in Britain in the first half of the twentieth century was a relatively slow process. This article seeks to understand state and private sector initiatives in the light of four issues: nutrition, political factors, problems in the dairy industry, and the moulding of the consumers of the future. Overall, the nutritional benefits of school milk are debatable, possibly even negative in those areas where it replaced other foods; but the dairy industry did well, creating new markets at a time of depression. After the war school milk reached the zenith of its popularity.     

零售业跨国公司进入中国市场的现状及影响

近年来,随着零售业发展的政策环境越来越宽松,国内消费规模不断扩大,零售业跨国公司抓住难得的机会大举进入中国市场,激发了我国零售业发展的活力,但也对我国零售业产生了巨大的压力和挑战,零售业跨国公司进入中国市场对我国零售业的影响是利弊共存的。国内零售业应从核心竞争力的培育、积极发展各类先进经营业态和实施"走出去"等方面采取一定的措施。     

One-child policy and childhood obesity

This paper investigates the effect of only children on childhood obesity in China. We use implementation measures of family planning policies as instrumental variables in the estimations, and find that being raised in a one-child family significantly increases the weight, body mass index, and probability of being overweight or obese for children. By examining mothers' care-taking behaviors and their children's dietary habits and nutritional intake, we identify the following channels linking one-child families with childhood obesity. (a) In one-child families, parents prefer spending money to using their time to care for their children. (b) In one-child families, children eat more high-sugar, high-fat, and high-protein food. A time–money trade-off could be a plausible mechanism of the effects we document.     

Solution or isolation: Is boarding school a good solution for left-behind children in rural China?

In recent decades, rural China has experienced a rapid increase in boarding school enrollment rates and in the population of left-behind children (LBC) (i.e., rural children whose parents migrate to urban areas for work). LBC tend to be worse off in numerous dimensions. At 61 million, China has the world's largest population of LBC. As it provides a different residential environment, boarding school can potentially exacerbate or mitigate the negative effects of parental migration. Using nationally representative data on Chinese families, we estimate the impact of parental migration and boarding school on child outcomes in cognition and physical and mental health. We find that while boarding school has no effect on LBC physical and mental health, it substantially improves performance on achievement tests for both LBC and non-LBC. Policies aimed at improving boarding school conditions in China, may improve not only cognitive outcomes, but also child physical and mental well-being.     

Are Determinants of Rural and Urban Food Security and Nutritional Status Different? Some Insights from Mozambique

Undernutrition of children 0–60 months old in Mozambique is much higher in rural than in urban areas. Food security is about the same, although substantial regional differences exist. Given these outcomes, we hypothesized that the determinants of food security and nutritional status in rural and urban areas of Mozambique would differ as well. Yet we find that the determinants of food insecurity and malnutrition, and the magnitudes of their effects, are very nearly the same, although some differentiation in determinants of undernutrition does begin to appear among children 24–60 months old. The difference in observed outcomes appears primarily due to differences in the levels of critical determinants rather than in the nature of the determinants themselves.     

Estimating the impacts of rising food prices on nutrient intake in urban China

The nutritional impacts of rising food prices on urban households across income classes are assessed using the 2004 NBS urban household survey data for Jiangsu province of China. Empirical results from this study suggest that the across-the-board food price increase is expected to have a substantial adverse impact on nutritional well-being of urban households and in particular, the poor. Moreover, an increase in the price of food grains alone will have the largest adverse impact on calorie and protein intakes, whereas an increase in price of oils and fats only will induce the largest reduction in fat intake.     

中国连锁零售企业主导的供应链竞争力评价

连锁零售企业主导的供应链竞争力的高低取决于供应链组织能力、供应链运营能力和供应链集成能力。与跨国连锁零售集团相比,中国连锁零售企业主导的供应链上述三大能力仍然偏低,需要从改善产业发展环境,提升连锁零售企业实力同时入手,以增强我国连锁零售企业主导的供应链竞争力。     

Effects of Child Health on Sources of Public Support

We estimate the effects of having a child in poor health on the mother's receipt of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and public support in the form of food (Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children [WIC] or food stamps), health insurance (Medicaid), and housing. We find that mothers with unhealthy children are between 2 and 8 percentage points (8-33%) more likely to rely on TANF than those with healthy children. There are stronger effects for mothers with older children than for those having first births. Mothers of children in poor health are also more likely than those with healthy children to receive SSI, Medicaid, and housing assistance but not WIC or food stamps. Given the restrictive new welfare environment, mothers who rely on TANF to cope with the burden of caring for unhealthy infants may soon encounter difficulties making ends meet and have insufficient resources to invest in their children's health.     

The growth challenges of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in South Africa's food processing complex

This article focuses on the growth challenges and opportunities of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in South Africa's food processing complex and argues that the growth challenges of these enterprises must be seen in the context of restructuring in South Africa's agrifood system. Based on a 30-company sample of SME food processors, the article argues that supermarket sourcing practices represent the most significant obstacle to the growth of these companies. Paradoxically, the complexity of South Africa's food retail system also offers opportunities for growth. The article ends by considering policy options for assisting SMEs, given this growth opportunity.     

北京农户对农村生态环境治理的认知差异研究

治理北京农村生态环境能改善农村人居环境,建设美丽宜居乡村.基于北京市3个村的问卷数据,从北京农户的个人因素、社会网络因素和家庭经营因素共14个指标入手,运用Logistic回归分析方法进行研究.结果显示,不同农户的性别、年龄、从事的职业、受教育程度、政治面貌、是否为村委干部、家庭年收入、家庭食品支出占总收入的比重和家庭劳动力所占比重对北京农村生态环境治理的认知具有显著影响.     

Retail margins, price transmission and price asymmetry in urban food markets: the case of Kinshasa (Zaire)

Some African food markets can still seem to operate inefficientlyafter price liberalisation. This seems mainly due to the existenceof significant transaction costs because of small-scale operations,and is influenced by lack of grading, deficient infrastructureand information systems. It is shown in the case of retail marketsin Kinshasa that search, supervision and other difficult-to-measuretransactions costs are more important in the margin of foodproducts than the measurable marketing costs (e.g., storage,transport). It is also shown through time series analysis thatmost of the price transmission between wholesale and retailhappens in the same week and that price asymmetry, i.e., thedifferent transmission of price increases compared with pricedecreases, is present for most products. Products characterisedby relatively more standardisation and homogeneity are shownto have lower retail margins and to behave symmetrically. Amodel based on kinked demand curves and search costs might explainthis asymmetric price behaviour.     

Nutrition education tools for primary school children in the Vaal region

South Africa's high prevalence of malnutrition severely affects children's well-being and ability to learn. According to the World Bank, malnutrition is found in households from all spheres of life, since caregivers are not well informed about healthy food choices and feeding practices. A long-term solution to the problem is to encourage people to grow food and improve their incomes, but a quicker solution is to provide health and nutrition education and services to encourage healthy food choices. This paper describes the development of nutrition education tools (NETs) as part of a nutrition education programme for primary school children (Grades 1 to 3) from low-income households in South Africa. The study used the Food and Agriculture Organization's framework for nutrition education to develop simple, cost-effective, appropriate and applicable NETs.     

Women’s Empowerment and Child Malnutrition: The Case of Mozambique

Using data from the 2011 Demographic and Health Survey in Mozambique this paper checks whether women empowerment has an impact on the nutritional status of children. We evaluate the degree of empowerment of women via multidimensional approaches, making a distinction between five domains: decision making, use of violence by husband/partner, attitude of the woman towards this use of violence, available information, material resources. Each domain includes several questions reflecting different aspects of empowerment. For each domain of empowerment, three different methods of aggregation are used: correspondence analysis, the so‐called Alkire and Foster methodology and the “fuzzy sets” approach. The impact of women empowerment on the nutritional status of children is analyzed via the MIMIC approach. No clear‐cut conclusion concerning the possible impact of women’s empowerment on the nutritional status of children could be drawn. But, ceteris paribus, the material wealth of the household, the educational level of the mother and her BMI are positively correlated with the nutritional status of children which is also higher when the child is female. Finally, there are important differences in the nutritional status of children between the various regions of Mozambique and this nutritional status is in most regions lower in rural areas.