# **7 NOTES**

1 See Alderman et al (2006), Glewwe et al (2001) and Maluccio et al (2009).

2 In addition to dietary intake and health, child malnutrition is influenced also by child care practices and other environmental factors such as access to clean drinking water, improved sanitation (UNICEF, 1990). 3 According to the definition adopted by the World Food summit organized by the FAO in 1996 food security is defined as “a situation that exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.” This definition is a significant departure from previous conceptualizations of food security which focused inordinately on the availability of food at the national or local level. But, in being broad and all encompassing, this definition is also a difficult one to operationalize, as it emphasizes the importance of access and utilization of food just as much as availability.

4 In statistics, standardized coefficients or beta coefficients are the estimates resulting from an analysis performed on variables that have been standardized so that their variances are 1. This is done to answer the question of which of the independent variables has a greater effect on the dependent variable in multiple regression setting. 5 One would like to identify the poor, vulnerable and those needing assistance but given the practical difficulties of doing so accurately in developing countries, proxy means testing is an exercise in identifying characteristics of households that are likely to be most well correlated with poverty and using these characteristics (or some combined configuration of them) to identify the poor and target assistance appropriately.

6 Ruel (2002), Weismann et al(2009) and Hoddinott and Yohannes (2002) 7 It is based on the idea that at levels below subsistence, individuals have high marginal utilities for calories and are likely to choose cheap sources of calories such as rice, wheat, cassava etc. As they pass subsistence, their marginal utility of calories begins to decline and they begin to value other non-nutritional attributes of food such as taste and start diversifying their diet. While the actual subsistence threshold is unobserved, their “dietary transition” is and this can be used to identify whether or not they have crossed the food security threshold. By relying directly on consumption behavior to elicit information on hunger and food security, this method obviates the need to impose caloric norms and thresholds.

8Anthro program files can be downloaded from http://www.who.int/childgrowth/software/en/ 9 Exclusion ranges suggested by WHO are: + 6 > HAZ < - 6 and + 5> WAZ < - 6.

10 Out of 64 districts rounds 1, 2, and 3 cover 48, 49 and 43 districts, respectively.

11 Individual level consumption of different food groups is based on a 24-hour recall, whereas household level consumption of different food groups is based on a 7-day recall period.

12 Nepal is divided into 75 districts. The survey excludes Dolpa, Mustang, Humla, and Manang districts. 13 We exclude 331 children under 5 for whom we have no information on anthropometric measurements. Lack of anthropometric measurements is either because the child was too sick or the interviewer was unable to meet the child in person after multiple site visits.

14 The conversion from food to calories was done using food tables provided by the Planning Commission. The consumed calories include food received as gifts and in-kind payment as well as readymade meal purchased outside the home.

15 Due to the fact that reliable food conversion tables were not available for Uganda, we could not construct calorie based measures such as per capita daily calories as well as the starchy staple ratio.

16 Alderman and Garcia (1994) conclude that the availability dimension of food security does not have a significant association with child nutritional status in Pakistan. Arif (2012) draws the same conclusion by analyzing selfperceived household food security measure.

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