Headey Derek, Hirvonen Kalle, Hoddinott John, Stifel David
International Food Policy Research Institute.
Cornell University; Professor David Stifel, Lafayette College.
Am J Agric Econ. 2019;101(5):1311-1327. doi: 10.1093/ajae/aaz032. Epub 2019 Sep 3.
Child dietary diversity is poor in much of rural Africa and developing Asia, prompting significant efforts to leverage agriculture to improve diets. However, growing recognition that even very poor rural households rely on markets to satisfy their demand for nutrient-rich non-staple foods warrants a much better understanding of how rural markets vary in their diversity, competitiveness, frequency and food affordability, and how such characteristics are associated with diets. This article addresses these questions using data from rural Ethiopia. Deploying a novel market survey in conjunction with an information-rich household survey, we find that children in proximity to markets that sell more non-staple food groups have more diverse diets. However, the association is small in absolute terms; moving from three non-staple food groups in the market to six is associated with an increase in the number of non-staple food groups consumed by ˜0.27 and the likelihood of consumption of any non-staple food group by 10 percentage points. These associations are similar in magnitude to those de-scribing the relationship between dietary diversity and household production diversity; moreover, for some food groups, notably dairy, we find that household and community production of that food is especially important. These modest associations may reflect several specific features of our sample which is situated in very poor, food-insecure localities where even the relatively better off are poor in absolute terms and where, by international standards, relative prices for non-staple foods are very high.
在非洲大部分农村地区和亚洲发展中地区，儿童的饮食多样性较差，这促使人们做出巨大努力，利用农业来改善饮食。然而，人们越来越认识到，即使是非常贫困的农村家庭也依赖市场来满足其对营养丰富的非主食食品的需求，这就需要更好地了解农村市场在多样性、竞争力、交易频率和食品可负担性方面的差异，以及这些特征与饮食之间的关联。本文利用来自埃塞俄比亚农村的数据来探讨这些问题。通过开展一项新颖的市场调查并结合一项信息丰富的家庭调查，我们发现，居住在销售更多非主食食品种类的市场附近的儿童饮食更多样化。然而，从绝对值来看，这种关联较小；市场上非主食食品种类从三种增加到六种，与儿童消费的非主食食品种类数量增加约0.27种以及消费任何一种非主食食品种类的可能性提高10个百分点相关。这些关联的程度与描述饮食多样性和家庭生产多样性之间关系的关联程度相似；此外，对于某些食品种类，尤其是乳制品，我们发现家庭和社区对该食品的生产尤为重要。这些适度的关联可能反映了我们样本的几个特定特征，该样本位于非常贫困、粮食不安全的地区，即使相对较富裕的家庭按绝对标准来说也很贫困，而且按照国际标准，非主食食品的相对价格非常高。
