Socioeconomic Influences on the Physical Wellbeing of Adults in Post-crisis North Korea: Regressing Women's MUAC on Available Household Data from a National Nutrition Survey

Abstract

Nutritional adequacy in North Korea (DPRK) has remained spotlighted since the famine crisis of the mid-1990s. Data from national household surveys facilitated by UN agencies primarily focus on children, with interviews of their mothers. No data are collected on men, or specifically on adults. Survey data on adult escapees in China or South Korea are not representative of conditions prevailing in present-day North Korea. This study focuses on adults’ physical wellbeing by regressing women's mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) as a proxy measure on selected household data from the third DPRK nutrition assessment. The results—with sampling limitations qualified—showed that residence in the ‘rice bowl’ region and access to farmers’ markets contributed most to wellbeing; differences in gross nutrition, biological factors, household size and even educational attainment mattered little. Further, elites in the national capital were worse off than households in the remote northeast, where proximity to China has facilitated trade exchanges for survival needs. All these signal emergent changes in household coping mechanisms, possibly even in the status quo, in present-day North Korea.