Trade policy reform, retail food prices and access to healthy diets worldwide.

Recent use of least-cost diets as a measure of global food security revealed that over 3 billion people are unable to afford sufficient nutritious food for an active and healthy life, driving demand for policy changes to improve access and affordability. This study quantifies the role of imports in consumer prices, matching retail prices in 144 countries to imports by origin of the item or its main ingredient, resulting in a total of 13,846 pairs of a retail price and its import cost in 2017. We find that 55% of retail items had some active imports supplementing domestic production, and of those around 48% have nonzero tariffs whose average effective rate is around 6.7% of the imported commodity price. Over all countries for which data are available, the share of consumer prices for least-cost healthy diets that is attributable to tariffs and non-tariff measures averages 0.67% and 2.45% globally. The highest restrictions are on nutrient-rich vegetables, fruits and animal-sourced foods. Access to bulk commodities from diverse origins is essential for food and nutrition security, providing a greater diversity of foods and food ingredients at lower and more stable prices than can be grown at any one location. On average over all food products that are imported, 83% of the retail price is domestic value added after arrival. We conclude that food imports are best understood as inputs to the domestic production and distribution of retail items, with consumer prices and growth of the food sector dependent on the cost levels, infrastructure and institutions underlying each product's entire value chain.

Cost and affordability of nutritious diets at retail prices: Evidence from 177 countries.

Many policies and programs aim to bring nutritious diets within reach of the poor. This paper uses retail prices and nutrient composition for 671 foods and beverages to compute the daily cost of essential nutrients required for an active and healthy life in 177 countries around the world. We compare this minimum cost of nutrient adequacy with the subsistence cost of dietary energy and per-capita spending on all goods and services, to identify stylized facts about how diet cost and affordability relate to economic development and nutrition outcomes. On average, the most affordable nutrient adequate diet exceeds the cost of adequate energy by a factor of 2.66, costing US$1.35 per day to meet median requirements of healthy adult women in 2011. Affordability is lowest in Sub-Saharan Africa. The sensitivity of diet costs to each requirement reveals the high cost of staying within acceptable macronutrient ranges, particularly the upper limit for carbohydrates. Among micronutrients, total diet costs are most sensitive to requirements for calcium as well as vitamins A, C, E, B12, folate and riboflavin. On average, about 5% of dietary energy in the least-cost nutrient adequate diets is derived from animal source foods, with small quantities of meat and fish. Over 70% of all animal products in least-cost diets is eggs and dairy, but only in upper-middle and high-income countries. In lower income countries where egg and dairy prices are significantly higher, they are replaced by larger volumes of vegetal foods. When controlling for national income, diet costs are most significantly correlated with rural travel times and rural electrification. These data suggest opportunities for targeted policies and programs that reduce market prices and the cost of nutritious diets, while improving affordability through nutrition assistance, safety nets and higher earnings among low-income households.

Climatic conditions and child height: Sex-specific vulnerability and the protective effects of sanitation and food markets in Nepal.

Environmental conditions in early life are known to have impacts on later health outcomes, but causal mechanisms and potential remedies have been difficult to discern. This paper uses the Nepal Demographic and Health Surveys of 2006 and 2011, combined with earlier NASA satellite observations of variation in the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) at each child's location and time of birth to identify the trimesters of gestation and periods of infancy when climate variation is linked to attained height later in life. We find significant differences by sex: males are most affected by conditions in their second trimester of gestation, and females in the first three months after birth. Each 100-point difference in NDVI at those times is associated with a difference in height-for-age z-score (HAZ) measured at age 12-59 months of 0.088 for boys and 0.054 for girls, an effect size similar to that of moving within the distribution of household wealth by close to one quintile for boys and one decile for girls. The entire seasonal change in NDVI from peak to trough is approximately 200-300 points during the 2000-2011 study period, implying a seasonal effect on HAZ similar to one to three quintiles of household wealth. This effect is observed only in households without toilets; in households with toilets, there is no seasonal fluctuation, implying protection against climatic conditions that facilitate disease transmission. We also use data from the Nepal Living Standards Surveys on district-level agricultural production and marketing, and find a climate effect on child growth only in districts where households' food consumption derives primarily from their own production. Robustness tests find no evidence of selection effects, and placebo regression results reveal no significant artefactual correlations. The timing and sex-specificity of climatic effects are consistent with previous studies, while the protective effects of household sanitation and food markets are novel indications of mechanisms by which households can gain resilience against adverse climatic conditions.

Macro shocks and micro outcomes: child nutrition during Indonesia's crisis.

A survey of households in rural Java is used to assess the nutritional impact of Indonesia's drought and financial crisis of 1997/1998. A time-age-cohort decomposition reveals significant nutritional impacts. However, child weight-for-age (WAZ) remained constant throughout the crisis, despite rapid increases in food prices and the consequent household consumption shock. The evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that within households, mothers buffered children's caloric intake, resulting in increased maternal wasting. However, reductions in the consumption of high-quality foods further resulted in increased prevalence of anemia for both mothers and children. The combined effects were particularly severe for cohorts conceived and weaned during the crisis.