[PDF] Full Food Prices And The Wages Of The Poor A Low Cost High Value Approach To High Frequency Food Security Monitoring Download eBook

Food prices and the wages of the poor: A low-cost, high-value approach to high-frequency food security monitoring

Author: Headey, Derek D.

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2023-03-24

Total Pages: 21

ISBN-13:

International food prices have become increasingly volatile in recent decades, with “global food crises” in 2008, 2011 and most recently in 2022. The 2008 crisis prompted international agencies to ambitiously extend their monitoring of domestic food prices in developing countries to strengthen early warning systems and food and nutrition surveillance. However, food inflation by itself is not sufficient for measuring disposable income or food affordability; for that, one must measure either changes in income or changes in an income proxy. Here we propose the use of a low-cost income proxy that can be monitored at the same high frequency and spatial granularity as food prices: the wages of poor unskilled workers. While not all poor people are unskilled wage earners, changes in the real “reservation wages” of low skilled activities are likely to be highly predictive of changes in disposable income for poorer segments of society (Deaton and Dreze 2002). We demonstrate this by estimating changes in “food wages” – wages deflated food price indices – during well-documented food price crises in Ethiopia (2008, 2011 and 2022), Sri Lanka (2022) and Myanmar (2022). In all these instances, food wages declined by 20-30%, often in the space of a few months. Moreover, in Myanmar we use a household panel survey data to show that the decline in food wages over the course of 2022 closely matches estimate declines in household disposable income and proportional increases in income-based poverty. We argue that the affordability of nutritious food for “all people, at all times” is a critically important dimension of food security, and we advocate for monitoring the wages of the poor as a cheap and accurate means of capturing that dimension.

Food Price Volatility and Its Implications for Food Security and Policy

Author: Matthias Kalkuhl

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-04-12

Total Pages: 620

ISBN-13: 3319282018

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This book provides fresh insights into concepts, methods and new research findings on the causes of excessive food price volatility. It also discusses the implications for food security and policy responses to mitigate excessive volatility. The approaches applied by the contributors range from on-the-ground surveys, to panel econometrics and innovative high-frequency time series analysis as well as computational economics methods. It offers policy analysts and decision-makers guidance on dealing with extreme volatility.

Affordability of nutritious diets in rural India

Author: Raghunathan, Kalyani

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2020-03-11

Total Pages: 54

ISBN-13:

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Malnutrition is endemic in India. In 2015-16 some 38% of preschool children were stunted and 21% were wasted, while more than half of Indian mothers and children were anemic. There are many posited explanations for the high rates of malnutrition in India, but surprisingly few discuss the role of Indian diets, particularly the affordability of nutritious diets given low wages and the significant structural problems facing India’s agricultural sector. This study was undertaken to address knowledge gaps around the affordability of nutritious diets in rural India. To do so we used nationally representative rural price and wage data to estimate the least cost means of satisfying India-specific dietary recommendations, referred to as the Cost of a Recommended Diet (CoRD), and assess the affordability of this diet relative to male and female wages for unskilled laborers. Although we find that dietary costs increased substantially over 2001-2011 for both men and women, rural wage rates increased more rapidly, implying that nutritious diets became substantially more affordable over time. However, in absolute terms nutritious diets in 2011 were still expensive relative to unskilled wages, constituting approximately 50-60% of male and about 70-80% of female daily wages, and were often even higher relative to minimum wages earned from the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). Since many poor households have significant numbers of dependents and substantial non-food expenditure requirements, it follows that nutritious diets are often highly unaffordable for the rural poor; we estimate that 45-64% of the rural poor cannot afford a nutritious diet that meets India’s national food-based dietary guidelines. Our results point to the need to more closely monitor food prices through a nutritional lens, and to shift India’s existing food policies away from their heavy bias towards cereals. Achieving nutritional security in India requires a much more holistic focus on improving the affordability of the full range of nutritious food groups and ensuring that economic growth results in sustained income growth for the poor.

The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2020

Author: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.

Published: 2020-07-01

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 925132901X

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Updates for many countries have made it possible to estimate hunger in the world with greater accuracy this year. In particular, newly accessible data enabled the revision of the entire series of undernourishment estimates for China back to 2000, resulting in a substantial downward shift of the series of the number of undernourished in the world. Nevertheless, the revision confirms the trend reported in past editions: the number of people affected by hunger globally has been slowly on the rise since 2014. The report also shows that the burden of malnutrition in all its forms continues to be a challenge. There has been some progress for child stunting, low birthweight and exclusive breastfeeding, but at a pace that is still too slow. Childhood overweight is not improving and adult obesity is on the rise in all regions. The report complements the usual assessment of food security and nutrition with projections of what the world may look like in 2030, if trends of the last decade continue. Projections show that the world is not on track to achieve Zero Hunger by 2030 and, despite some progress, most indicators are also not on track to meet global nutrition targets. The food security and nutritional status of the most vulnerable population groups is likely to deteriorate further due to the health and socio economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The report puts a spotlight on diet quality as a critical link between food security and nutrition. Meeting SDG 2 targets will only be possible if people have enough food to eat and if what they are eating is nutritious and affordable. The report also introduces new analysis of the cost and affordability of healthy diets around the world, by region and in different development contexts. It presents valuations of the health and climate-change costs associated with current food consumption patterns, as well as the potential cost savings if food consumption patterns were to shift towards healthy diets that include sustainability considerations. The report then concludes with a discussion of the policies and strategies to transform food systems to ensure affordable healthy diets, as part of the required efforts to end both hunger and all forms of malnutrition.

The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2018

Author: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.

Published: 2018-09-14

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 9251305722

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New evidence this year corroborates the rise in world hunger observed in this report last year, sending a warning that more action is needed if we aspire to end world hunger and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030. Updated estimates show the number of people who suffer from hunger has been growing over the past three years, returning to prevailing levels from almost a decade ago. Although progress continues to be made in reducing child stunting, over 22 percent of children under five years of age are still affected. Other forms of malnutrition are also growing: adult obesity continues to increase in countries irrespective of their income levels, and many countries are coping with multiple forms of malnutrition at the same time – overweight and obesity, as well as anaemia in women, and child stunting and wasting.

Local Food Systems; Concepts, Impacts, and Issues

Author: Steve Martinez

Publisher: DIANE Publishing

Published: 2010-11

Total Pages: 87

ISBN-13: 1437933629

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This comprehensive overview of local food systems explores alternative definitions of local food, estimates market size and reach, describes the characteristics of local consumers and producers, and examines early indications of the economic and health impacts of local food systems. Defining ¿local¿ based on marketing arrangements, such as farmers selling directly to consumers at regional farmers¿ markets or to schools, is well recognized. Statistics suggest that local food markets account for a small, but growing, share of U.S. agricultural production. For smaller farms, direct marketing to consumers accounts for a higher percentage of their sales than for larger farms. Charts and tables.

Food data collection in Household Consumption and Expenditure Surveys. Guidelines for low and middle income countries

Author: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.

Published: 2018-10-30

Total Pages: 108

ISBN-13: 9251309809

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The measurement of food consumption and expenditure is a fundamental component of any analysis of poverty and food security, and hence the importance and timeliness of devoting attention to the topic cannot be overemphasized as the international development community confronts the challenges of monitoring progress in implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In 2014, the International Household Survey Network published a desk review of the reliability and relevance of survey questions as included in 100 household surveys from low- and middle-income countries. The report was presented in March 2014 at the forty-fifth session of the United Nations Statistical Commission (UNSC), in a seminar organized by the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on Food Security, Agricultural and Rural Statistics (IAEG-AG). The assessment painted a bleak picture in terms of heterogeneity in survey design and overall relevance and reliability of the data being collected. On the positive side, it pointed to many areas in which even marginal changes to survey and questionnaire design could lead to a significant increase in reliability and consequently, great improvements in measurement accuracy. The report, which sparked a lot of interest from development partners and UNSC member countries, prompted IAEG-AG to pursue this area of work with the ultimate objective of developing, validating, and promoting scalable standards for the measurement of food consumption in household surveys. The work started with an expert workshop that took place in Rome in November 2014. Successive versions of the guidelines were drafted and discussed at various IAEG-AG meetings, and in another expert workshop organized in November 2016 in Rome. The guidelines were put together by a joint FAO-World Bank team, with inputs and comments received from representatives of national statistical offices, international organizations, survey practitioners, academics, and experts in different disciplines (statistics, economics, nutrition, food security, and analysis). A list of the main contributors is included in the acknowledgment section. In December 2017 a draft of the guidelines was circulated to 148 National Statistical Offices from low- to high-income countries for comments. The document was revised following that consultation and submitted to UNSC, which endorsed it at its forty-ninth session in March 2018 (under item 3(j) of the agenda, agricultural and rural statistics. The version presented here reflects what was endorsed by the Commission, edited for language. The process received support from the Global Strategy for Agricultural and Rural Statistics. The document is intended to be a reference document for National Statistical Offices, survey practitioners, and national and international agencies designing household surveys that involve the collection of food consumption and expenditure data.

COVID-19 and global food security: Two years later

Author: McDermott, John

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2022-03-07

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 0896294226

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Two years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the health, economic, and social disruptions caused by this global crisis continue to evolve. The impacts of the pandemic are likely to endure for years to come, with poor, marginalized, and vulnerable groups the most affected. In COVID-19 & Global Food Security: Two Years Later, the editors bring together contributions from new IFPRI research, blogs, and the CGIAR COVID-19 Hub to examine the pandemic’s effects on poverty, food security, nutrition, and health around the world. This volume presents key lessons learned on food security and food system resilience in 2020 and 2021 and assesses the effectiveness of policy responses to the crisis. Looking forward, the authors consider how the pandemic experience can inform both recovery and longer-term efforts to build more resilient food systems.