Food Security, Poverty and Nutrition Policy Analysis

Statistical Methods and Applications

3rd Edition - September 21, 2021
Imprint: Academic Press
Authors: Suresh Babu, Shailendra Gajanan
Language: English
Hardback ISBN:
9 7 8 - 0 - 1 2 - 8 2 0 4 7 7 - 1
eBook ISBN:
9 7 8 - 0 - 1 2 - 8 2 0 4 8 3 - 2

Food Security, Poverty and Nutrition Policy Analysis: Statistical Methods and Applications, Third Edition combines statistical data analysis and computer literacy, applying… Read more

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Food Security, Poverty and Nutrition Policy Analysis: Statistical Methods and Applications, Third Edition combines statistical data analysis and computer literacy, applying the results to develop policy alternatives through a series of statistical methods for real world food insecurity, malnutrition and poverty problems. The book presents the latest uses of statistical methods for policy analysis using the open source statistical environment R, in addition to having the original Stata files and applications. A new chapter on obesity brings in new datasets for analysis to effectively demonstrate the use of such data for addressing policy issues.

Finally, program evaluation methods which can be directly applied to the data on food security, nutrition, poverty indicators and causal factors are included. This unique, real-world data takes the reader through a "hands-on" approach toward econometric practice whereby they can also test the effects of policy and program interventions. Further, this is the first book to explore actual data with STATA and R statistical packages that also provides a line-by-line guide to the programming and interpretation of results.

Cover image
Title page
Table of Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Praises from around the world for the third edition
Preface
Introduction
The nature and scope of food security, poverty, and nutrition policy analysis
Why should a book that teaches statistical methods for analyzing socioeconomic data for generating policy and program options be important?
Organization of this book
Rationale for statistical methods illustrated in the book
Learning objectives
Section I. Food security policy analysis
Chapter 1. Introduction to food security: concepts and measurement
Introduction
Conceptual framework of food security
Food security in the developed world
Other policy issues in the United States
Food security concerns in other countries
Measurement of the determinants of food security
Food availability
Food utilization
Stability of availability
Conclusions
A natural question is why is measuring food insecurity important for better program design in developing countries?
Exercises
Chapter 2. Implications of technological change, postharvest technology, and technology adoption for improved food security—application of t-statistic
Introduction
Review of selected studies
Food security issues and technology in the United States
Biofuels—the Chinese experience
US Farm Policy and food security—background and current issues
GEO-5 and coping mechanisms for the future
Empirical analysis—a basic univariate approach
Data description and analysis
Two measures of household food security are computed
Student's t-test for testing the equality of means
Policy implications
Technical appendices
Using STATA for t-tests
Exercises
STATA exercise
Chapter 3. Effects of commercialization of agriculture (shift from traditional crop to cash crop) on food consumption and nutrition—application of chi-square statistic
Introduction
A few concepts
Review of selected studies
Organic farms and commercialization in the United States
Organic farming in a global context
Empirical analysis
Data description and analysis
Descriptive analysis: cross-tabulation results
Conclusion and policy implications
Technical appendices
Limitations of the chi-square procedure
Exercises
STATA exercise
Chapter 4. Effects of technology adoption and gender of household head: the issue, its importance in food security—application of Cramer's V and phi coefficient
Introduction
Review of selected studies
Female farm operators in Kenya and Ethiopia: recent evidence
Female farm operators in the United States
Women in agriculture: the global scene
Uganda's coffee market: a case study
Empirical analysis
Data description and analysis
Descriptive analysis: cross-tabulation results
Cramer's V and phi tests
Conclusion and policy implications
Cramer's V in STATA
Technical appendices
Exercises
Chapter 5. Changes in food consumption patterns: its importance to food security—application of one-way ANOVA
Introduction
Determinants of food consumption patterns and its importance to food security and nutritional status
Impact on food security
Review of selected studies
Empirical analysis and main findings
Data description
Analysis method
Results
One-way ANOVA in STATA
Conclusion and policy implications
One-way ANOVA
Underlying assumptions in the ANOVA procedure
Decomposition of total variation
Number of degrees of freedom
F-test and distribution
Relation of F to T-distribution
Exercises
Chapter 6. Impact of market access on food security—application of factor analysis
Introduction
Assessing the linkages of market reforms on food security and productivity
Empirical analysis
Technical concepts
Data description and methodology
Factor analysis by principal components
Examining eigenvalues
Principal components analysis in STATA
Conclusion and policy implications
Technical appendices
Exercises
Section II. Nutrition policy analysis
Chapter 7. Impact of maternal education and care on preschoolers' nutrition—application of two-way ANOVA
Introduction
Conceptual framework: linkages between maternal education, child care, and nutritional status of children
Maternal education and nutrition status in the United States
Children's nutrition and maternal education in Africa
Cross-tabulation of weight for height with mothers' educational levels
Interpreting the interaction effect and post hoc tests
Conclusion
Technical appendices
Post hoc procedures
Exercises
Chapter 8. Indicators and causal factors of nutrition—application of correlation analysis
Introduction
Review of selected studies
Food insecurity and nutrition in the United States
Food insecurity in Brazil
Global Monitoring Report on Nutrition and Millennium Development Goals
Impact of food price spike and domestic violence in rural Bangladesh
Malnutrition and chronic disease in India
Malnutrition in Guatemala
Empirical analysis and main findings
Data description and methodology
Concepts in correlation analysis
Inference about population parameters in correlation
Descriptive analysis
Main results
Correlation analysis of the outcome variables
Estimating correlation using STATA
Conclusion and policy implications
Estimating correlation using R
Exercises
Chapter 9. Effects of individual, household, and community indicators on child's nutritional status—application of simple linear regression
Introduction
Conceptual framework and indicators of nutritional status
Review of studies on the determinants of child nutritional status
Child's nutritional status in the United States
AIDS and double burden in Africa
Malnutrition and mortality in Pakistan and India
Social participation as social capital, women empowerment, and nutrition in Peru
Empirical analysis and main findings
Data description
Incidence of stunting and wasting
Normality tests and transformation of variables
Regression results
Conclusion
Simple regression in R
Exercises
STATA workout
Chapter 10. Maternal education and community characteristics as indicators of nutritional status of children—application of multivariate regression
Introduction
Selected studies on the role of maternal education and community characteristics on child nutritional status
Community characteristics and Children's nutrition in the United States
Community characteristics and child nutrition in Kenya
Financial crisis and child nutrition in East Asia
Double burden within mother–child pairs: Asian case
Empirical analysis
Data description and methodology
Descriptive summary of independent variables
Main results
Conclusions
Exercises
Section III. Special topics on poverty, nutrition, and food policy analysis
Chapter 11. Predicting child nutritional status using related socioeconomic variables—application of discriminant function analysis
Introduction
Conceptual framework: linkages between women's status and child nutrition
Review of selected studies
Indirect linkages between women's status and child's nutritional status
USDA nutrition assistance programs: a case study from the United States
Case studies of women's status and child nutritional status from Africa, Asia, and Latin America
Can garden plots save Russia?
Empirical analysis and main findings
Data description and analysis
Descriptive statistics
Testing the assumptions underlying discriminant analysis model
Summary of main findings
Classification statistics
Canonical discriminant analysis using STATA
Conclusions
Technical appendix: discriminant analysis
Canonical discriminant analysis using R
Exercises
STATA workout
Chapter 12. Measurement and determinants of poverty—application of logistic regression models
Introduction
Dimensions and rationale for measuring poverty
Construction of poverty lines using food energy intake and cost of basic needs approaches
New measures of poverty based on the engel curve
Selected review of studies on determinants of poverty
Poverty and welfare in the United States
Agriculture and poverty in Laos and Cambodia
Financial crisis and poverty in the Russian Federation
Poverty in Europe
Poverty in developing countries: China and India
Determinants of poverty—binary logistic regression analysis
Dichotomous logistic regression model
An example with the Malawi dataset
Expected determinants of household welfare
Empirical results
Measuring model fit
Interpreting the logistic coefficients and discussion of results
Estimating logistic regression models in STATA
Conclusions and implications
Technical appendices
Estimating logistic regression models in R
Exercises
STATA workout
Chapter 13. Classifying households on food security and poverty dimensions—application of K-Means cluster analysis
Introduction
Food hardships and economic status in the United States
Food security, economic crisis, and poverty in India
Cluster analysis: various approaches
Hierarchical clustering method
K-means method
Review of selected studies using cluster analysis
Empirical analysis: K-Means clustering
Data description
Initial partitions and optimum number of clusters
Descriptive characteristics of the cluster of households
Cluster centers
Cluster analysis in STATA
Conclusion and implications
Cluster analysis in R
Exercises
STATA workout–1
STATA workout–2
Chapter 14. Household care as a determinant of nutritional status—application of instrumental variable estimation
Introduction
Review of selected studies
Federal nutrition programs and children's health in United States
Parental unemployment and children's health in Germany
Food security using the Gallup World Poll
Empirical analysis
Conclusions
Exercises
STATA workout 1
STATA workout 2
Chapter 15. Achieving an ideal diet—modeling with linear programming
Introduction
Review of the literature
Linear programming model
Solution procedures
Graphical solution approach
Summary
Exercises
Chapter 16. Food and nutrition program evaluation
Introduction
Recent developments
Summary and conclusions
STATA workout 1
STATA workout 2
Chapter 17. Multidimensional poverty and policy
Multidimensional child poverty and gender inequalities
Multidimensional energy poverty
Financial exclusion and Multidimensional Poverty Index
The Alkire–Foster method
STATA implementation
STATA workout
Section IV. Technical appendices
Appendix 1. Introduction to software access and use
Appendix 2. Software information
Appendix 3. SPSS/PC+ environment and commands
Appendix 4. Data handling
Appendix 5. SPSS programming basics
Appendix 6. STATA—a basic tutorial
Appendix 7. Anthropometric indicators—computation and use
Appendix 8. Elements of matrix algebra
Appendix 9. Some preliminary statistical concepts
Appendix 10. Instrumental variable estimation
Appendix 11. Statistical tables
References
Index

Suresh Babu

Suresh C Babu is a Senior Research Fellow and Head of Capacity Strengthening at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Washington D.C. Before joining IFPRI in 1992 as a Research Fellow, Dr. Babu was a Research Economist at the Division of Nutritional Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. Between 1989 and 1994 he spent 5 years in Malawi, Southern Africa on various capacities. He was Senior Food Policy Advisor to the Malawi Ministry of Agriculture on developing a national level Food and Nutrition Information System; an Evaluation Economist for the UNICEF-Malawi working on designing food and nutrition intervention programs; Coordinator of UNICEF/IFPRI food security program in Malawi; and a Senior Lecturer at the Bunda College of Agriculture, Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (LUANR). He has been coordinator of IFPRI’s South Asia Initiative and Central Asia Program. His past research covers a range of developmental issues including nutrition economics and policy, economics of soil fertility, famine prevention, market integration, migration, pesticide pollution, groundwater depletion, and gender bias in development. He has published more than 18 books and monographs and 80 peer reviewed journal papers. He has been on the advisory board of World Agricultural Forum and a Coordinating Lead Author of Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. He currently conducts research on Capacity Development including Economic Analysis of Extension and Advisory Services; Reforming of National agricultural Research Systems; Understanding Policy Process; and Institutional Innovations for Agricultural Transformation. He is or has been a Visiting as Honorary Professor of Indira Gandhi National Open University, India, American University, Washington DC, University of Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa, and Zhejiang University, China. He currently serves or has served on the editorial boards of the following journals – Food Security, Food and Nutrition Bulletin, Agricultural Economics Research Review, African Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, African Journal of Management, and African Journal of Food, Nutrition, and Development. Dr. Babu was educated at Agricultural Universities in Tamil Nadu, India (B.S. Agriculture; M.S. Agriculture) and at Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa (M.S. Economics and PhD Economics).

Affiliations and expertise

Senior Research Fellow and Head of Capacity Strengthening, International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, DC, USA

Shailendra Gajanan

Shailendra Gajanan is a Professor in the Department of Economics, and is the Chair of the Department of Business Management and Education at the University of Pittsburgh, Bradford. He received his BA and MA in Economics from the Presidency College and the Loyola College, University of Madras, India. He received and MA (1985) from the University of Akron, Ohio and PhD (1991) in Economics from the University of Pittsburgh. He joined the faculty of the Social Sciences Division at the University of Pittsburgh in 1991. He served previously as the Chair of the Social Sciences Division. Dr. Gajanan has served as the Program Director for Economics and has taught lower and upper level theory and policy classes in economic theory, econometrics, game theory, as well as applied classes in global hunger and environmental economics. He has also taught courses in India and West Germany. He supervises and directs International Study Abroad Programs and is slated to coordinate the Pitt-in-Himalayas in the summer of 2016. He has also served as an external evaluator on several thesis committees from universities in India and Malaysia. Dr. Gajanan’s research focuses on applied microeconomics dealing with water depletion within the commons, capacity utilization in manufacturing, the premium in the labor market for skills with English, and the impact of Category Management on product assortment in retail. He is the co-author of Food Security, Poverty and Nutrition Policy Analysis: Statistical Methods and Applications (Elsevier 2014).

Affiliations and expertise

Professor, Department of Economics, Department of Business Management and Education, University of Pittsburgh, Bradford, USA

Life Sciences

Physical Sciences & Engineering

Social Sciences & Humanities

Health