Background: Globally, food insecurity is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality through other diseases, which means food security and nutrition are crucial to improving people's health outcomes. Both food insecurity and the health outcomes are the policy and agenda of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, there is a lack of macro-level empirical studies concerning the relationship between food insecurity and health outcomes in sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, even though the region is highly affected by food insecurity and its related health problems. Therefore, this study aims to examine the impact of food insecurity on life expectancy and infant mortality in SSA countries.Methods: The study uses secondary panel data collected from international institutions. It also mainly employs Driscoll-Kraay standard errors (DKSE), a generalised method of momentum (GMM), fixed effects (FE) and Granger causality approaches, along with others estimation techniques for robustness checks. Results: The DKSE result of model 1A confirms that a one percent increment in people’s prevalence for undernourishment reduces their life expectancy by 0.0034 percentage points. However, a one percentage increment in average dietary energy supply increases SSA countries' life expectancy by 0.0031 percentage points in model 1B. The FE results show that a one percent increment in the prevalence of undernourishment leads to an enhancement of infant mortality by 0.0119 percentage points in model 1C. However, the GMM result for model 1D confirms that a one percent increment in average dietary energy supply reduces infant mortality by 0.0004 percentage points.Conclusions: Food insecurity harms the health status of SSA countries, but food security impacts in the reverse direction. In other words, prevalence of undernourishment adversely affects life expectancy and it increases infant mortality. Moreover, an improvement in average dietary energy supply can improve life expectancy and reduces infant mortality. The study recommends efficient utilisation of resources; improvements in investment in agricultural research, markets, infrastructures, macroeconomic policies and institutions; and developing sub-region strategies based on their agro-ecological zone, all of which are essential to overcome food insecurity and improve health outcomes.
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