Rural food markets and child nutrition

Headey, D.; Hoddinott, J.; Hirvonen, K.; Stifel, David C.

Rural food markets and child nutrition

Abstract

Child dietary diversity is poor in much of rural Africa and developing Asia, prompting significant efforts to leverage agriculture to improve diets. However, growing recognition that even very poor rural households rely on markets to satisfy their demand for nutrient-rich non-staple foods warrants a much better understanding of how rural markets vary in their diversity, competitiveness, frequency and food affordability, and how such characteristics are associated with diets. This article addresses these questions using data from rural Ethiopia. Deploying a novel market survey in conjunction with an information-rich household survey, we find that children in proximity to markets that sell more non-staple food groups have more diverse diets. However, the association is small in absolute terms; moving from three non-staple food groups in the market to six is associated with an increase in the number of non-staple food groups consumed by similar to 0.27 and the likelihood of consumption of any non-staple food group by 10 percentage points. These associations are similar in magnitude to those describing the relationship between dietary diversity and household production diversity; moreover, for some food groups, notably dairy, we find that household and community production of that food is especially important. These modest associations may reflect several specific features of our sample which is situated in very poor, food-insecure localities where even the relatively better off are poor in absolute terms and where, by international standards, relative prices for non-staple foods are very high.

Title	Rural food markets and child nutrition
Creator	Headey, D.
	Hoddinott, J.
	Hirvonen, K.
	Stifel, David C.
Publisher	American Journal of Agricultural Economics
Academic Department	Economics
Division	Social Sciences
Organization	Lafayette College
Date Issued	September 3, 2019
Date Available	2019-11-26
Type	Article
Language	English
Keyword	diet diversity
	child nutrition
	Ethiopia
	food market diversity
Bibliographic Citation	Headey, D., et al. (2019 Sept 03) "“Rural food markets and child nutrition.” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 101 (5):1311-1327.
Standard Identifier	Handle 10385/5425kb08j
Standard Identifier	DOI 10.1093/ajae/aaz032
Permalink	http://hdl.handle.net/10385/5425kb08j
Rights Statement	Creative Commons - Attribution
Rights Holders	Stifel, David C.
	Hoddinott, J.
	Hirvonen, K.
	Headey, D.