Don’t Forget about the Children – Latent Food Insecurity in Rural Cambodia

Dorothee C. Buehler, Rebecca C. Hartje and Ulrike Grote

No 236333, 90th Annual Conference, April 4-6, 2016, Warwick University, Coventry, UK from Agricultural Economics Society

Abstract: Despite encouraging developments in overall undernourishment figures our analysis of rural Cambodian households reveals very high malnutrition in children. In this paper we use a novel panel data set from Stung Treng in Cambodia which allows to compare different household food security indicators with each other and individual level anthropometric data of children under five. While the large majority of households appear to be food secure according to the Food Consumption Score (FCS) and the Household Hunger Scale (HHS), the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) and the Coping Strategies Index (CSI) classify less than four percent of the households in Stung Treng as food secure. Stunting and underweight measures for children show that between 38 to 45 percent of children under five are classified as undernourished. Analyzing the influence of household characteristics on these different measures for food security we find that the FCS is largely driven by household characteristics and livelihood strategy choices whereas the anthropometrics show little or zero correlation. Household wealth, inequality, and the prevalence of shocks however, has a strong influence on both measures. Individual and mother specific characteristics are vital to explain child malnutrition.

Keywords: Agricultural and Food Policy; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety; Food Security and Poverty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 13
Date: 2016-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-dev, nep-net and nep-sea
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aesc16:236333

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.236333

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