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Food Security: Indicators, Measurement, and the Impact of Household

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Food Security: Indicators, Measurement, and the Impact of Household Food Security: Indicators, Measurement, and the Impact of Household Behavior on Food Acquisition and Allocation, Experimental Evidence from Tibet, China Yuan-lin HUANG1, Xiang-mei LI2,3, Lars Lefgren4, 1.College of Natural Resource and Environment, Qinzhou University, Guangxi, China, 535000; 2. College of Economics and Management, Nanjing Agricultural University，Nanjing ,China 210095; 3. China Center for Food Security Studies, Nanjing Agricultural University，Nanjing ,China 210095; 4.Department of Economics, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, United States, 84604） Yuan-lin HUANG, Ph.D, Associate Professor, [email protected] Corresponding Author: Xiang-mei LI, Ph.D. Professor. Email: [email protected] Selected Paper prepared for presentation at the 2015 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, San Francisco, California, 26-28 July 2015 Abstract This paper aimed to determine the magnitude of food insecurity and its determinants in rural households of Tibet, China. In this paper, a community based cross-sectional study was conducted from 2002 to 2013, whole about Tibet (this survey program was founded by Tibet Government Founding). In the study, household heads were recruited using a multistage random sampling technique. Data were collected by face-to-face interviews using the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) tool after verbal informed consent. We chosen the same districts, same household, collected data every two years, totally number of the households is 736. Based on the data of sample investigation, combined with individual anthropometric estimates for children and a thorough understanding of household behavior, we moved beyond the simple head count measure of food insecurity in this paper and proposed three measures of food insecurity, along the lines of new poverty measures and explained the desirable properties of these measures that are not present in the head count measure. We then measured household living standards, compiles Tibetan poverty statistics, derives minimum dietary energy requirements, simulates the impact of food price or food supply shocks on food insecurity by population groups. We found that Tibetan foodstuff tradition is eating more meat and less grain, the annual consumption of grain is only 269.02 kg per person, which includes 46.02 kg of feedstuff. Only 42.54% of the grain was harvested in Tibet. Many households had little no-agricultural income and few livestock, nearly three quarters of the households (73.27%) had food insecurity. Households headed by females (AOR = 3.47, 93% CI:1.68, 13.21), lack of education (AOR = 2.59, 95% CI: 1.46, 4.60), family size of <2 (AOR = 2.39, 95% CI: 1.21,4.70), family size of >7 (AOR = 13.23,95% CI:6.18, 28.32), few or absence of livestock (AOR = 5.60, 95% CI:1.28, 24.43), absence of income from off-farm activities (AOR = 3.12, 95% CI:1.53, 6.36), lack of irrigation (AOR = 3.54, 95% CI:2.14, 5.18) and lack of perennial income (AOR = 3.15, 95% CI:1.88, 5.27) were factors associated with food insecurity. Key words: household income and behavior; food security; aggregate food supplies; Tibet Autonomous Region 1. Introduction There are numerous indicators reporting on food insecurity and under-nutrition at global, country, household, and individual levels. The World Food Summit in 1996 determined that food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. This widely accepted definition emphasizes the multidimensional nature of food security, comprising level and stability of food access and availability, as well as adequacy of food use and nutritional status. Hence, food insecurity is not easy to measure. The same applies to hunger, which is commonly understood as a sensation of not having enough to eat. On the one hand, the extent of hunger can be measured as a lack of essential nutrients in the diet, for which a widely used indicator is food energy deficiency. On the other hand, hunger may also be the result of humans’ inability to absorb and use food energy and specific nutrients for body functions, implying that the overall nutritional status is also affected by people’s health. In this paper, the authors think that food insecurity exists when people lack access to sufficient amounts of safe and nutritious food, and therefore are not consuming enough food for an active and healthy life. This may be due to the unavailability of food, inadequate purchasing power, or inappropriate utilization at household level. In Tibet, we found that food insecurity is a risk factor for poor health including chronic diseases and Human Immuno-deficiency Virus (HIV) infection, as in the other places in the world (FAO &WFP, 2009; Seligman HK, 2010; Weiser S, 2007; Vozoins N, 2003). Tibetan food insecurity not only affects ourselves, but also affects future food security of all over the world. There are many approaches of assessing chronic food insecurity and under-nutrition. FAO indicator of under-nourishment, household food consumption surveys and anthropometric measurements are the most frequently used approaches. In this paper, based on the survey data (especially food consumption data), we measure household living standards, compile Tibetan poverty statistics, derive minimum dietary energy requirements, simulate the impact of food price or food supply shocks on food insecurity by population groups. Our interest in Tibet food insecurity measure stems mainly from two reasons. First, from 2002 to 2013, we have been collected a comprehensive set of questions on food consumption, which can meet the direct measures of food insecurity requires; Several questions (described in Table 1 below) reflecting varying degrees of food insufficiency are asked and the qualitative nature of the questions do capture, at least to certain extent the level of food insecurity through individuals' perceptions of their food situation. Second, based on existing poverty measures, the presence of multiple questions allows us to apply new methodology, our interest is on the aggregation aspect of a measure of food insecurity rather the identification of the households that are food insecure. We implicitly assume that using some indicator we are properly able to identify households that suffer from food insecurity. Exactly how we should combine the amount of food insecurity suffered by each household to form a societal measure of food insecurity is the object of this chapter. Although this paper examines food insecurity in Tibet, the methodology that we use can equally be applied for other developing regions. 2. Basic Framework In the past twenty years, many scholars argued that aggregate measures of food deprivation should take in to account aspects of inequality within food insecure households (Sen 1981; Foster and Leathers 1999). Vecchi and Coppolla (2003), Fujji (2004), and Jha (2004) made aggregate measure of food insecurity to distinguish households experiencing slight reductions in food intake from households suffering from more severe levels of hunger, they gave a higher weight to the more food deprived household and provided a single food insecurity index. Depending upon the different weighting procedure used, they had different food insecurity indices. Foster et al. (1984) to measure severity of undernutrition in terms of calorie deficiency while Fujji (2004) uses the same aggregation rule to measure malnutrition using standardized heights and weights. Compared to these papers, here we have proposed broader set of rules in Tibet, discussed the theoretical issues associated with these measures especially in the context of its application to subjective measures of food insecurity as is the case with Tibetan food insecurity data that we have. Taking a step further, using these aggregation rules, we test whether food insecurity measures are statistically significantly different among different demographic categories. We begin with a brief description of the qualitative approach and our design of a theoretical framework that allows us to incorporate more information from food insecurity instruments with multiple questions. Then we consider an empirical application of this framework. We calculate the extent of food insecurity and the extent of food insecurity with hunger in Tibet in 2002 and 2013. To do so, we use the 18 item Core Food Security Module (CFSM) which is on numerous surveys. In addition to comparing results for all households, we further consider how the indices differ by various demographic categories. 2.1 A Qualitative Approach In a qualitative approach to food insecurity, developed in Tibet, food insecurity is treated as a latent variable and hence subjective questions related to the food intake of the household are used to elicit that information. Depending on their response to the set of questions, each household in then given a food insecurity index that is calculated using multi variate analysis. More affirmative responses to food inadequacy questions represent higher degrees of food insecurity. The household food insecurity index varies between zero and some upper bound with higher numbers indicating greater food insecurity. Once each household is given a food insecurity index, the next step is to formulate an aggregate measure of food insecurity. Instead of a single food insecurity index, in the official statistics households are classified as food secure, food insecure without hunger, or food insecure with hunger. Hence,
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