The conventional economics literature equates welfare with consumption‐based utility, neglecting the psychological effects of uncertainty and fear of the future on well‐being. In this study, we examine how food insecurity relates to changes in subjective well‐being within a comparative analysis across different country groups between 2005 and 2018 and find that food insecurity matters to well‐being. We also examine the relationship between experienced food insecurity and well‐being, taking into account any potential endogeneity. In low‐income, food‐deficient, food‐importing and drought‐affected countries, changes in the prevalence of undernourishment explain a great deal of the variation in subjective well‐being over time.
Child malnutrition is an enormous public health problem in low‐ and middle‐income countries (LMICs). In this paper, we study the relationship between non‐maternal adult female household members (AFHMs) and under‐5 child nutritional outcomes using nationally representative Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey data, 2016. Because most of the primary inputs that go into the production of child health are intensive in maternal time, having additional AFHMs may ease the time constraints of the child's mother. We use anthropometric measures such as height‐for‐age
z
‐scores (HAZ) and weight‐for‐age
z
‐scores (WAZ) to measure stunting and underweight, respectively, as objective indicators of child nutritional status. Among our sampled households, we find that 40% of the children are stunted, 18% severely stunted, 27% underweight and 8% severely underweight. Furthermore, about 20% of the sampled children live with at least one extra non‐maternal AFHM. The multivariate regression results suggest that an additional AFHM is associated with significantly higher HAZ and WAZ scores and less likelihood of severe stunting compared with children living with fewer AFHMs. Finally, the paper discusses the potential pathways through which non‐maternal AFHMs can influence child nutritional status.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.