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GTAP Resources: Resource Display

GTAP Resource #7348

"Nutrition as a Basic Need: A New Method for Utility-Consistent and Nutritionally Adequate Food Poverty Lines"
by Mahrt, Kristi, Derek Headey, Sherman Robinson, Channing Arndt and Anna Herforth


Abstract
Basic needs food poverty lines are typically derived from food baskets that satisfy a dietary energy standard while reflecting consumption patterns of poor households. However, since the poor consume unbalanced low-quality diets deficient in key micronutrients, the use of an energy-only nutrition standard incorporates a circular logic whereby the cost of basic nutritional needs is estimated from populations with nutritionally inadequate diets. We instead develop an alternative poverty line that satisfies the balanced diet criteria of food-based dietary guidelines, but which still incorporates preferences for specific food items within broad food groups, and utility consistency across regional food baskets. Using data from Myanmar, we show that an energy-based poverty line results in non-poor households who have severe micronutrient deficiencies; deficiencies which the more expensive healthy diet poverty line eliminates. If the normative proposition that nutrition is a basic need is accepted, then the world is much poorer than we think.


Resource Details (Export Citation) GTAP Keywords
Category: 2024 Conference Paper
Status: Not published
By/In: Presented during the 27th Annual Conference on Global Economic Analysis (Fort Collins, Colorado, USA)
Date: 2022
Version: draft
Created: Mahrt, K. (4/15/2024)
Updated: Mahrt, K. (4/15/2024)
Visits: 142
- Economic analysis of poverty
- Health
- Asia (Southeast)


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