Hunger, nutrition, and precipitation: evidence from Ghana and Bangladesh

Matthew Cooper,Ruth Meinzen-Dick,Carlo Azzarri,Molly E Brown

doi:10.1007/s11111-019-00323-8

Abstract

Changing precipitation patterns caused by climate change are expected to have major impacts on food security and nutrition in agrarian areas in developing countries. However, the linkages between the duration and severity of precipitation shocks and their effects on child nutrition and household food security metrics remain underexplored. In this study, we used Feed the Future datasets from Ghana and Bangladesh to examine the impact of precipitation extremes on nutrition, measured by children’s height-for-age and weight-for-height Z-scores, and food security, measured by the Household Hunger Scale. We used a spatial error regression to control for the effects of spatial autocorrelation, and we found an association between precipitation shocks and household hunger in both Ghana and Bangladesh, as well as an association between higher rainfall and worse child nutrition in Ghana.

Highlights

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states in the Fifth Assessment Report with high confidence that climate change will increase the risk of food insecurity through impacts such as droughts, flooding, and shifting precipitation patterns (IPCC 2013)
We utilized geolocated Feed the Future (FTF) surveys from Ghana (2012) and Bangladesh (2011, 2015) to test for an observable impact of rainfall levels and rainfall extremes on household food security, measured by the Household Hunger Scale (HHS), and child undernutrition, measured by child height-for-age Zscores (HAZ) and weight-for-height Z-scores (WHZ) using spatial error regression (SER) where necessary to account for possible spatial autocorrelation in the regressions
This study has contributed to the literature on precipitation shocks and food security and nutrition in three ways

Summary

Introduction

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states in the Fifth Assessment Report with high confidence that climate change will increase the risk of food insecurity through impacts such as droughts, flooding, and shifting precipitation patterns (IPCC 2013). While rates of undernutrition and food insecurity have been falling overall for the past few decades, there have been recent increases in these statistics in. While increasing precipitation extremes induced by climate change are broadly known to be a threat to food security and nutrition, the interacting effects of rainfall shocks at various temporal scales, overall changes in precipitation patterns, and the current water requirements of livelihood systems are underexplored. Much of the work that has been done has not sufficiently controlled for the effects of spatial autocorrelation in the patterns of precipitation shocks as well as in food security and nutrition outcomes. We here explore these interrelationships, taking care to account for spatial autocorrelation

Background and previous literature

Height-for-age and weight-for-height Z-scores are expressed by

12 Months

Modeling methods and results

Findings

Discussion