use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this book are included in the book's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the book's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.

No abstract

No abstract

Livelihood diversification and greater non-farm income have been considered as useful mechanisms to propel growth, lower rural poverty and augment farm income in the developing countries. Little, however, is known about its im-plications for nutritional outcomes such as dietary diversity. This article con-tributes to the literature by investigating whether greater non-farm income helps in improving food consumption patterns and dietary diversity. Using a nationally representative panel data of rural India and an instrumental variable (IV) approach, we investigate this association and find that non-farm income increases expenditure on food products especially non-cereal prod-ucts, leading to greater household dietary diversity. This has crucial policy implications for nutrition transition and livelihood diversification, further contributing to the existing knowledge on agriculture-nutrition pathways. Acknowledegment:JEL Codes: O12, J48 #481 30 kets for food consumption which exposes households to the vagaries of price fluctuations and could potentially undermine their food security. Similarly, non-farm activities could shift resources such as land and labor, previously used to produce food, towards other expenditures. At the same time, higher income increases household access to greater quantity and better variety of 35 food.Against the above background, this paper is an empirical investigation into the relationship between household dietary diversity and non-farm income. We focus on India as the country of analysis where non-farm incomewhere the discourse on hunger and food security has been synonymous with poverty. There are subtle differences in what these terms imply for welfare. Poverty levels are a money metric which captures purchasing power. Dietary diversity, on the other hand, tells us about actual consumption and the ability of a household to acquire food, which is essential for human development. 50Also, while the link between non-farm income and poverty is straightforward, the nature of relationship between the non-farm income and dietary diversity is theoretically ambiguous.Pathways from agriculture to nutrition (36, 56,27,37), often tend over-55 look the importance of non-farm activities for nutrition, which is an issue of concern. Non-farm activities are a major source of income in rural areas. Income from non-farm sources account for about 35% of total rural income in Africa and around 50% in Asia and Latin America (29). In India, 88% of the rural households which are primarly engaged in agriculture and allied 60 activities, also undertake additional economic activity in the non-farm sector (17). In this paper, we provide evidence on the role played by income from the non-farm sector for food consumption and dietary diversity. Using a nationally representative panel data for the years 2004-05 and 2011-12 for rural India, we find that increase in non-farm income significantly improves 65 household diets, which is an intermediate pathway to improved nutritional outcomes. Given migration and remittan...

HighlightsThis paper provides evidence on the link between consumer subsidy and nutrient intake.We compare districts with a targeted versus universal subsidy entitlements.Universalization of PDS in some of the poorest districts led to greater nutrient intake and diet quality.These results have important implications for the National Food Security Act in India.