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Affordability of nutritious diets in rural India

In 2015–16 some 38% of preschool children in India were stunted, 21% wasted, and more than half of Indian mothers and young children were anemic. Though widely studied, surprisingly little research on malnutrition in India explores the role of diets, particularly the affordability of nutritious diet...

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Autores principales: Raghunathan, Kalyani, Headey, Derek, Herforth, Anna
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: IPC Science and Technology Press 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7957322/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33746340
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2020.101982
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author Raghunathan, Kalyani
Headey, Derek
Herforth, Anna
author_facet Raghunathan, Kalyani
Headey, Derek
Herforth, Anna
author_sort Raghunathan, Kalyani
collection PubMed
description In 2015–16 some 38% of preschool children in India were stunted, 21% wasted, and more than half of Indian mothers and young children were anemic. Though widely studied, surprisingly little research on malnutrition in India explores the role of diets, particularly the affordability of nutritious diets given low wages and the significant structural problems facing India’s agricultural sector. To explore this we used nationally representative rural price and wage data to estimate the least cost means of satisfying India’s national dietary guidelines, referred to as the Cost of a Recommended Diet (CoRD), and assessed the affordability of this diet relative to male and female wages for unskilled laborers. Although we find that dietary costs have increased substantially 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 80–90% of female and 50–60% of male daily wages. Overall, we estimate that 63–76% of the rural poor could not afford a recommended diet in 2011. Achieving nutritional security in India requires a much more holistic focus on improving the affordability of the full range of nutritious food groups (not just cereals), a reappraisal of social protection schemes in light of the cost of more complete nutrition, ensuring that economic growth results in sustained income growth for the poor, and more timely and transparent monitoring of food prices, incomes and dietary costs.
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spelling pubmed-79573222021-03-19 Affordability of nutritious diets in rural India Raghunathan, Kalyani Headey, Derek Herforth, Anna Food Policy Article In 2015–16 some 38% of preschool children in India were stunted, 21% wasted, and more than half of Indian mothers and young children were anemic. Though widely studied, surprisingly little research on malnutrition in India explores the role of diets, particularly the affordability of nutritious diets given low wages and the significant structural problems facing India’s agricultural sector. To explore this we used nationally representative rural price and wage data to estimate the least cost means of satisfying India’s national dietary guidelines, referred to as the Cost of a Recommended Diet (CoRD), and assessed the affordability of this diet relative to male and female wages for unskilled laborers. Although we find that dietary costs have increased substantially 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 80–90% of female and 50–60% of male daily wages. Overall, we estimate that 63–76% of the rural poor could not afford a recommended diet in 2011. Achieving nutritional security in India requires a much more holistic focus on improving the affordability of the full range of nutritious food groups (not just cereals), a reappraisal of social protection schemes in light of the cost of more complete nutrition, ensuring that economic growth results in sustained income growth for the poor, and more timely and transparent monitoring of food prices, incomes and dietary costs. IPC Science and Technology Press 2021-02 /pmc/articles/PMC7957322/ /pubmed/33746340 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2020.101982 Text en © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Raghunathan, Kalyani
Headey, Derek
Herforth, Anna
Affordability of nutritious diets in rural India
title Affordability of nutritious diets in rural India
title_full Affordability of nutritious diets in rural India
title_fullStr Affordability of nutritious diets in rural India
title_full_unstemmed Affordability of nutritious diets in rural India
title_short Affordability of nutritious diets in rural India
title_sort affordability of nutritious diets in rural india
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7957322/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33746340
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2020.101982
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