IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/aaea14/168368.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Role of Agricultural Growth in Reducing Child Malnutrition

Author

Listed:
  • Mary, Sebastien
  • Gomez y Paloma, Sergio

Abstract

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Bank suggest that agricultural growth is the most effective way to fight (child) malnutrition. Whether this is indeed the case is still very much debated, partly because there is little direct evidence on this topic. Using a dataset of 50 MDG1 countries observed between 1991 and 2009, this paper estimates and compares the impact of agricultural growth on child stunting against those of industrial growth and services growth. We find that, to achieve a 1 percentage point reduction in child stunting, a 11.1% increase in agricultural GDP per capita is necessary, against a 9.7% increase in industrial GDP per capita and a 7.8% increase in services GDP per capita. In other words, contrary to the policy narrative developed by many international development organizations, the services sector is the most effective engine towards reducing child stunting. Finally, we find weak evidence of the impacts of food prices on child stunting and no evidence of the impacts of food prices volatility for the period observed.

Suggested Citation

  • Mary, Sebastien & Gomez y Paloma, Sergio, 2014. "The Role of Agricultural Growth in Reducing Child Malnutrition," 2014 Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2014, Minneapolis, Minnesota 168368, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:aaea14:168368
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.168368
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/168368/files/AAEA-Minneapolis.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.168368?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:unu:wpaper:wp2012-89 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Wei Pan, 2001. "Akaike's Information Criterion in Generalized Estimating Equations," Biometrics, The International Biometric Society, vol. 57(1), pages 120-125, March.
    3. Loayza, Norman V. & Raddatz, Claudio, 2010. "The composition of growth matters for poverty alleviation," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(1), pages 137-151, September.
    4. Headey, Derek D., 2013. "Developmental Drivers of Nutritional Change: A Cross-Country Analysis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 76-88.
    5. Louise Fox & Melissa Sekkel Gaal, 2008. "Working Out of Poverty : Job Creation and the Quality of Growth in Africa," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 6434, December.
    6. Justine Shults & Sarah J. Ratcliffe & Mary Leonard, 2007. "Improved generalized estimating equation analysis via xtqls for quasi-least squares in Stata," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 7(2), pages 147-166, June.
    7. Arndt, Channing & Østerdal, Lars Peter & Hussain, M. Azhar, 2012. "Effects of Food Price Shocks on Child Malnutrition," WIDER Working Paper Series 089, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    8. Ravallion, Martin & Datt, Gaurav, 1996. "How Important to India's Poor Is the Sectoral Composition of Economic Growth?," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 10(1), pages 1-25, January.
    9. Paolino, Philip, 2001. "Maximum Likelihood Estimation of Models with Beta-Distributed Dependent Variables," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(4), pages 325-346, January.
    10. Ravallion, Martin & Chen, Shaohua, 2007. "China's (uneven) progress against poverty," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 1-42, January.
    11. Easterly, William, 2009. "How the Millennium Development Goals are Unfair to Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 26-35, January.
    12. Smith, Lisa C. & Haddad, Lawrence James, 2000. "Explaining child malnutrition in developing countries: a cross-country analysis," Research reports 111, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    13. Smith, Lisa C. & Ruel, Marie T. & Ndiaye, Aida, 2005. "Why Is Child Malnutrition Lower in Urban Than in Rural Areas? Evidence from 36 Developing Countries," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 33(8), pages 1285-1305, August.
    14. Horton, S. & Ross, J., 2003. "The economics of iron deficiency," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 51-75, February.
    15. Christiaensen, Luc & Demery, Lionel & Kuhl, Jesper, 2011. "The (evolving) role of agriculture in poverty reduction--An empirical perspective," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(2), pages 239-254, November.
    16. Smith, Lisa Catherine & Haddad, Lawrence, 2001. "How important is improving food availability for reducing child malnutrition in developing countries?," Agricultural Economics, Blackwell, vol. 26(3), pages 191-204, December.
    17. Mara P. Squicciarini & Andrea Guariso & Johan Swinnen, 2013. "Food crisis spurs aid for poverty," Nature, Nature, vol. 501(7468), pages 492-492, September.
    18. Stefan Dercon, 2013. "Agriculture and development: revisiting the policy narratives," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 44(s1), pages 183-187, November.
    19. Levine, David I. & Rothman, Dov, 2006. "Does trade affect child health?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 538-554, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mary, Sebastien & Gomez y Paloma, Sergio, 2015. "Does Aid Decrease Child Mortality?," 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy 212231, International Association of Agricultural Economists.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sébastien Mary & Kelsey Shaw & Sergio Gomez y Paloma, 2019. "Does the sectoral composition of growth affect child stunting reductions?," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 37(2), pages 225-244, March.
    2. Nobuhiko Fuwa & Arsenio M. Balisacan & Fabrizio Bresciani, 2015. "In Search of a Strategy for Making Growth More Pro-Poor in the Philippines," Asian Economic Papers, MIT Press, vol. 14(1), pages 202-226, Winter/Sp.
    3. Ligon, Ethan & Sadoulet, Elisabeth, 2018. "Estimating the Relative Benefits of Agricultural Growth on the Distribution of Expenditures," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 417-428.
    4. Christiaensen, Luc & Todo, Yasuyuki, 2014. "Poverty Reduction During the Rural–Urban Transformation – The Role of the Missing Middle," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 43-58.
    5. Alwang, Jeffrey & Gotor, Elisabetta & Thiele, Graham & Hareau, Guy & Jaleta, Moti & Chamberlin, Jordan, 2019. "Pathways from research on improved staple crop germplasm to poverty reduction for smallholder farmers," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 172(C), pages 16-27.
    6. Kirk, Angeli & Kilic, Talip & Carletto, Calogero, 2018. "Composition of Household Income and Child Nutrition Outcomes Evidence from Uganda," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 452-469.
    7. Benfica, R. & Henderson, H., 2018. "IFAD RESEARCH SERIES 23 - The effect of the sectoral composition of economic growth on rural and urban poverty," IFAD Research Series 280072, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
    8. Nicoletta Berardi & Federica Marzo, 2017. "The Elasticity of Poverty with respect to Sectoral Growth in Africa," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 63(1), pages 147-168, March.
    9. Peter Warr & Waleerat Suphannachart, 2021. "Agricultural Productivity Growth and Poverty Reduction: Evidence from Thailand," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 72(2), pages 525-546, June.
    10. Kirk, Angeli & Kilic, Talip & Carletto, Calogero, 2015. "How Does Composition of Household Income Affect Child Nutrition Outcomes? Evidence from Uganda," 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy 212006, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    11. Rui Benfica & Heath Henderson, 2021. "The Effect of the Sectoral Composition of Economic Growth on Rural and Urban Poverty," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 67(1), pages 248-284, March.
    12. Isis Gaddis & Stephan Klasen, 2014. "Economic development, structural change, and women’s labor force participation:," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 27(3), pages 639-681, July.
    13. UNDP Regional Bureau for Africa & Haroon Bhorat & Karmen Naidoo, "undated". "Drivers of Inequality in the Context of the Growth-Poverty-Inequality Nexus in Africa: Overview of key issues," UNDP Africa Policy Notes 2017-04, United Nations Development Programme, Regional Bureau for Africa.
    14. Luc Christiaensen & Joachim Weerdt & Yasuyuki Todo, 2013. "Urbanization and poverty reduction: the role of rural diversification and secondary towns," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 44(4-5), pages 435-447, July.
    15. Pérez-Mesa, David & Marrero, Gustavo A. & Darias-Curvo, Sara, 2021. "Child health inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa," MPRA Paper 108801, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Bhattacharyya, Sambit & Resosudarmo, Budy P., 2015. "Growth, Growth Accelerations, and the Poor: Lessons from Indonesia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 154-165.
    17. Jing You, 2014. "Dietary change, nutrient transition and food security in fast-growing China," Chapters, in: Raghbendra Jha & Raghav Gaiha & Anil B. Deolalikar (ed.), Handbook on Food, chapter 9, pages 204-245, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    18. Katsushi S. Imai & Gordon Abekah-Nkrumah & Purnima Purohit, 2014. "Is Rural Contribution to Aggregate Poverty Reduction Substantial? New Evidence," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series 20814, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    19. Mary, Sebastien & Shaw, Kelsey & Colen, Liesbeth & Gomez y Paloma, Sergio, 2020. "Does agricultural aid reduce child stunting?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    20. Dithmer, Jan & Abdulai, Awudu, 2017. "Does trade openness contribute to food security? A dynamic panel analysis," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 218-230.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety; Food Security and Poverty; International Development;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:aaea14:168368. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aaeaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.