Rising Food Prices and Undernourishment - A Cross-Country Inquiry

ESA Working Paper No. 10-01

33 Pages Posted: 10 Mar 2010

See all articles by Gustavo Anríquez

Gustavo Anríquez

United Nations - Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)

Silvio Daidone

United Nations - Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO); Luiss Guido Carli University

Erdgin Mane

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

Date Written: February 2010

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 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 increase not only reduces 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 big role in assuring adequate nutritional attainments in rural areas, and surprisingly, even in urban areas.

Keywords: Food prices, food policy, calories intake, demand system, household surveys

JEL Classification: D12, I32, O12, Q18

Suggested Citation

Anríquez, Gustavo and Daidone, Silvio and Mane, Erdgin, Rising Food Prices and Undernourishment - A Cross-Country Inquiry (February 2010). ESA Working Paper No. 10-01, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1567518 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1567518

Gustavo Anríquez (Contact Author)

United Nations - Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) ( email )

Viale delle Terme di Caracalla
Rome, Lazio 00100
ITALY

Silvio Daidone

United Nations - Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) ( email )

Viale delle Terme di Caracalla
Rome, Lazio 00153
Italy

Luiss Guido Carli University

Via O. Tommasini 1
Rome, Roma 00100
Italy

Erdgin Mane

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) ( email )

Viale delle Terme di Caracalla
Rome, Lazio 00153
Italy

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