Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/90599 
Year of Publication: 
2012
Series/Report no.: 
GlobalFood Discussion Papers No. 14
Publisher: 
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Research Training Group (RTG) 1666 - GlobalFood, Göttingen
Abstract: 
Despite recent improvements in economic performance, undernutrition rates in Africa appear to have improved much less and rather inconsistently across the continent. We examine to what extent there is an empirical linkage between income growth and reductions of child undernutrition in Africa. We do this by pooling all DHS surveys for African countries, control for other correlates of undernutrition, and add country-level GDP per capita. We find that increases in GDP per capita are associated with lower individual probabilities of being underweight of about 2.5 percent per one hundred dollars. This association becomes insignificant when time fixed effects are added to the regression. Other explanatory variables such as mother’s education, socioeconomic status, and poor mother’s nutritional status are quantitatively more important than economic growth suggesting that other intervention to affect these correlates of undernutrition are likely to be more promising than relying on improved economic conditions.
Subjects: 
economic growth
child undernutrition
Africa
economic development
wasting
stunting
underweight
JEL: 
I15
O10
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.