Abstract
South Asia remains the region with the highest prevalence of undernourishment with India accounting for 255 million food insecure people. A worsening of child nutritional outcomes has been observed in many Indian states recently and children in rural areas have poorer nutrition compared to those in urban areas. This paper investigates the relationship between land ownership, non-farm livelihoods, food security, and child nutrition in rural India, using the Young Lives Survey. The survey covers the same rural households and children over the period 2002–2013 in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Our empirical analysis uses a sample of 1209 children (and their households) who were aged around 1 year in 2002. Our results show that large agricultural land ownership is significantly associated with better child nutrition (measured using height-for-age and stunting) and household food security. A transition from farm to non-farm work improves child nutrition, but only among landless households. While access to land is still critical for improving household food and nutrition security among rural households, there is a trend towards greater non-farm livelihoods, and a decline in reliance on farming, particularly among landless and marginal farmers.
Highlights
The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2020 report has highlighted the critical role of a diverse diet to prevent malnutrition, the need to improve the nutrient adequacy of diets, and the transformation of food systems to support affordable healthy diets.the cost of a healthy diet currently exceeds national average food expenditures in most developing countries [1]
This paper investigated the associations between ownership of agricultural land, household livelihoods, food security, and child nutrition in rural India, using a unique panel dataset covering a period of eleven years
Our empirical evidence conclusively shows that having a large parcel of agricultural land is strongly associated with better child nutrition outcomes and household food security
Summary
The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2020 report has highlighted the critical role of a diverse diet to prevent malnutrition, the need to improve the nutrient adequacy of diets, and the transformation of food systems to support affordable healthy diets. In India, nutritional outcomes are generally worse in rural areas where agriculture is the predominant occupation of nearly two-thirds of the rural labor force [3,4,5] In these settings, income from land often accounts for a substantial proportion of household income, with income generation and diversification of livelihoods critically dependent on asset ownership [6]. Health Survey-5 (NFHS-5) 2019–21 paint a poor picture of child malnutrition with child stunting having worsened (stagnated) in 10 (8) out of 22 Indian states, wasting and underweight increased in 11 out of 22 and overweight increased in 16 and only 1 state has seen a decline in child overweight [19] Against this background, our paper addresses the links between household land, livelihoods, food security, and child nutrition outcomes over the period 2002–2013 using a sample of 1209 children who were aged around 1 year in 2002. This is an important complement to existing cross-sectional data as it can account for unobserved heterogeneity across individuals, which is likely to have a large influence on both livelihoods and nutrition
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