Can household food security predict individual undernutrition? Evidence from Cambodia and Lao PDR

Dorothee Bühler, Rebecca Hartje and Ulrike Grote

Hannover Economic Papers (HEP) from Leibniz Universität Hannover, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät

Abstract: This paper uses a novel data set of marginalized households from Cambodia and Lao PDR to better understand different food security concepts. The multitude of indicators available raises the question how these indicators relate to each other and whether they are suitable to detect undernutrition of individuals. In the analysis we identify the causes of food insecurity in relation to a number of different food security concepts and examine the links between the food security status of households and individuals using anthropometric data of children under five. The regression results show that the different indicators of food security at the household level capture fundamentally different aspects of food security. In addition, household food insecurity only explains a small share of child undernutrition. We call for more research on intra-household allocation of food and stress the implications of our research for the design and targeting of food and nutrition support programs.

Keywords: Food Security; Undernutrition; Human Development; Poverty; Southeast Asia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I15 O15 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2017-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-dev and nep-sea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://diskussionspapiere.wiwi.uni-hannover.de/pdf_bib/dp-594.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:han:dpaper:dp-594

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Hannover Economic Papers (HEP) from Leibniz Universität Hannover, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Heidrich, Christian ().