The set of countries used in the analysis is discussed and the nutrition literature is surveyed for the purpose of identifying as completely as possible the set of factors identified in the nutrition literature as the ideal variables or measures of underlying causes of malnutrition.

# **2.1 Measures of Food Security**

This section serves to highlight the fact that the necessary data for measuring the different dimensions of the concept of food security either at the household or at the individual level are the data missing most frequently from the standard surveys used to assess the levels and determinants of malnutrition. In contrast, more data seem to be available for the measurement of some of the components of child care and environment and health with the latter being measured almost as best as one could hope for. This is probably a reflection of the tradeoffs associated with measurement and cost. Given the limited survey budgets allocated to collecting information on the different dimensions of nutrition, greater emphasis may be placed on collecting information on environment and health and child care as these are collected at lower cost and perhaps even more reliably compared to the cost of a detailed survey collecting information on food availability, access and utilization at the household or individual level.

A systematic effort is made to identify the extent to which any or some of these ideal variables/measures identified in the literature as an important underlying cause of malnutrition can be approximated by any proxy measure that is collected in the existing surveys used to analyze or monitor child malnutrition at the national or even at the regional level within any given country.

## **2.1.1 “Ideal” Indicators of Food Security**

The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) defines food security as “a situation that exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and 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 (Barrett, 2009).

What constitutes availability, access and utilization – the three dimensions of the current thinking on food security? Availability is associated with the supply side of food, measured most often by the extent of agricultural production and food trade balance relative to the size of consumption for any given country. Access, on the other hand, brings in the demand element to the equation: conditional on what is available in the local market and the price at which it is available, what is the range of food choices that are open to households given their incomes? Conceptually, it is this dimension of food security that has the strongest resonance with poverty and vulnerability not only because of Thomas, 2013) although catch‐up growth in earlier childhood was associated with cognitive abilities similar to those who had never been stunted (Crookston, Penny, Alder, Dickerson, Merrill, Stanford, Porucznik and Dearden, 2010).

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