Department of Anthropology, Emory University, Georgia 30322, United States.
Soc Sci Med. 2010 May;70(9):1450-7. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2010.01.018. Epub 2010 Feb 12.
The 2008 food crisis may have increased household food insecurity and caused distress among impoverished populations in low-income countries. Policy researchers have attempted to quantify the impact that a sharp rise in food prices might have on population wellbeing by asking what proportion of households would drop below conventional poverty lines given a set increase in prices. Our understanding of the impact of food crises can be extended by conducting micro-level ethnographic studies. This study examined self-reported household food insecurity (FI) and common mental disorders (CMD) among 110 community health AIDS care volunteers living in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia during the height of the 2008 food crisis. We used generalized estimating equations that account for associations between responses given by the same participants over 3 survey rounds during 2008, to model the longitudinal response profiles of FI, CMD symptoms, and socio-behavioral and micro-economic covariates. To help explain the patterns observed in the response profiles and regression results, we examine qualitative data that contextualize the cognition and reporting behavior of AIDS care volunteers, as well as potential observation biases inherent in longitudinal, community-based research. Our data show that food insecurity is highly prevalent, that is it associated with household economic factors, and that it is linked to mental health. Surprisingly, the volunteers in this urban sample did not report increasingly severe FI or CMD during the peak of the 2008 food crisis. This is a counter-intuitive result that would not be predicted in analyses of population-level data such as those used in econometrics simulations. But when these results are linked to real people in specific urban ecologies, they can improve our understanding of the psychosocial consequences of food price shocks.
2008 年粮食危机可能导致低收入国家贫困人口的家庭粮食不安全状况加剧，并造成贫困人群困苦。政策研究人员试图通过询问在价格大幅上涨的情况下，有多少比例的家庭会降至传统贫困线以下，来量化粮食价格大幅上涨可能对人口福祉造成的影响。通过开展微观层面的民族志研究，可以进一步了解粮食危机的影响。本研究调查了埃塞俄比亚亚的斯亚贝巴的 110 名社区卫生艾滋病护理志愿者在 2008 年粮食危机高峰期自我报告的家庭粮食不安全（FI）和常见精神障碍（CMD）情况。我们使用广义估计方程，考虑了同一参与者在 2008 年 3 次调查中给出的回答之间的关联，以对 FI、CMD 症状以及社会行为和微观经济协变量的纵向反应概况进行建模。为了帮助解释反应概况和回归结果中观察到的模式，我们检查了定性数据，这些数据使艾滋病护理志愿者的认知和报告行为以及纵向、基于社区的研究中固有的潜在观察偏差具有背景。我们的数据表明，粮食不安全状况非常普遍，与家庭经济因素有关，并且与心理健康有关。令人惊讶的是，该城市样本中的志愿者在 2008 年粮食危机高峰期并未报告 FI 或 CMD 日益严重。这是一个违反直觉的结果，在计量经济学模拟等人口水平数据分析中不会预测到这种结果。但是，当将这些结果与特定城市生态系统中的真实人员联系起来时，它们可以改善我们对粮食价格冲击的心理社会后果的理解。
