Ninth International Conference on Health, Wellness & Society

Abstract

This study evaluates the impact of per capita net availability of macronutrients through imports on the prevalence of malnutrition among children below five years. An impact of globalization on health outcomes largely through faster economic growth has been documented in the literature. However, a causal link between agricultural imports and nutritional outcomes is yet to be identified. In our study, we explore this channel by converting the number of imported food items into their energy equivalents and then estimate its impact on children’s nutritional outcomes. DHS provides data on the prevalence of malnutrition for 74 countries over the period 1986 to 2017. The energy equivalent of imported agricultural commodities is constructed using FAO dataset for the same period. We hypothesize that an increase in net imports of macronutrients would reduce the prevalence of malnutrition among children in these countries. While testing our hypothesis we are faced with endogeneity issue primarily because of omitted variable bias and reverse causality for which we employ instrumental variable approach. We estimate the values of net imports of macronutrients using the geographical characteristics of countries and use these values as instruments for actual figures. Our study finds that an increase in net imports of calorie has a negative impact on nutritional outcomes while protein and fat have a positive impact. This suggests that children’s nutritional outcomes can be improved through higher imports of nutrient-rich food items. International cooperation, therefore, is needed for these countries to improve their nutritional outcomes and achieve zero malnutrition.