Poverty and Undernutrition

Abstract A large share of the population in many developing countries suffers from chronic undernutrition. This book provides a detailed comparative study of undernutrition in sub‐Saharan Africa and South Asia, the two worst affected areas, and provides policy advice for those concerned in nutrition‐cum‐development worldwide. The book concentrates on five theoretical and empirical challenges that undernutrition poses: what undernutrition is, who and how many the undernourished are, where they are, when they are undernourished, and why. Two main measurement methods are conventionally used for estimating the prevalence of undernutrition by country and providing answers to the other w‐questions. One of the methods, proclaimed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO), is focused on the distribution of national food supplies (calorie availability) across households and a minimum per person calorie norm. The other method, championed mainly by the World Health Organization (WHO), is based on anthropometric assessments of individuals’ heights and weights. The two methods that provide conflicting answers to all the w‐questions are critically examined from theoretical, conceptual, as well as empirical (data) perspectives. The aggregate food‐supply approach is found to be the least reliable and, moreover, irrelevant for some urgent policy purposes, such as targeting undernourished households in intervention schemes. Also, the anthropometric indicators of undernutrition have serious limitations, but these are less difficult to rectify, and they have more policy relevance. A main conclusion of the policy analysis is that undernutrition is mainly a problem of food affordability at the household level, rather than food availability at the national level. Hence, however measured, undernutrition can never be seriously alleviated unless its root cause, poverty, is attacked.