History has shown that food is almost always available to those with buying power (Wiggins et al. A true lack of food that would force a benevolent ‘social planner’ to ration is rarely a concern.

The former depends on the abundance of per capita food supplies from domestic production, stocks, and imports of food. availability) and households’ demand for food (i.e. What are the macro determinants of food (in)security?įood security has two macroeconomic determinants related to the supply of food (i.e. reducing the number of undernourished by more than 60 million per year, arguably a daunting task even without factoring in the pandemic.įinally, history has shown repeatedly that rising food prices – and the resulting increased perception of food insecurity – can help trigger social unrest and toppled incumbent governments.3 When social unrest escalates into an armed conflict, like a civil war, poverty and hunger are further exacerbated. SDG2 sets 2030 as the target for eliminating undernourishment – i.e. Indeed, the importance of food security has been formally recognised by the international community, which captured it in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 2 (aka Zero Hunger). At the aggregate level, if the phenomenon is widespread across the population, it can reduce a country’s human capital accumulation and, thus, its economic growth potential (Fogel 2004). By limiting educational attainment and lifelong earning potential, it perpetuates inequality by keeping people in a poverty trap (Atinmo et al. Undernourishment, especially if experienced in childhood, can have negative effects on physical and cognitive development. Is food (in)security macro relevant?įood (in)security may have significant repercussions on economic development. A change in diet forced by economic factors is often perceived as a descent into poverty as it is the first line of defence against rising food insecurity – a major factor behind social unrest. more than the entire population of North America).Įven though our study is focused on undernutrition, we try to capture other measurable aspects of food adequacy by looking at two diet composition variables: the share of dietary energy from cereals, roots, and tubers, and the average protein supply.2 As income per capita rises, diets shift from cereals to proteins (especially animal proteins). Before the pandemic struck, it is estimated that there were still more than 680 million people suffering from undernourishment (i.e. Our study focuses on the prevalence of undernourishment, which measures the share of the population whose habitual food consumption lies below the minimum dietary energy requirement.1 From 2000 to 2019 the share of the global population that was undernourished declined substantially from 13.2% to 8.9%, respectively. The fast decline observed in the first decade of the century, however, started faltering in 2015. In practice, there are different ways of measuring food insecurity depending also on its degrees of severity, from worries about inadequate food quality to insufficient quantity. It is commonly defined as people having continuous physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their food preferences and dietary needs for an active and healthy life (Committee for World Food Security 2012). In absence of that, food insecurity arises. What is food (in)security?įood security is a multifaced concept.

Hence, in absence of policy actions, the number of undernourished might increase by around 60 million globally, leading to one of the most dramatic collateral damages of the current pandemic (IMF 2021). To help shed light on this issue, we study the links between food security, income growth, and food prices over the economic cycle. We find that GDP growth, and to a lesser extent food inflation, are prominent macroeconomic determinants of food security in emerging market and developing economies.

This cocktail of factors risks erasing several years of progress in reducing undernourishment globally.

Luther tweeten food security overview