Raghunathan Kalyani, Headey Derek, Herforth Anna
Poverty, Health and Nutrition Division, International Food Policy Research Institute, New Delhi, India.
Poverty, Health and Nutrition Division, International Food Policy Research Institute, Yangon, Myanmar.
Food Policy. 2021 Feb;99:101982. doi: 10.1016/j.foodpol.2020.101982.
In 2015-16 some 38% of preschool children in India were stunted, 21% wasted, and more than half of Indian mothers and young children were anemic. Though widely studied, surprisingly little research on malnutrition in India explores the role of diets, particularly the affordability of nutritious diets given low wages and the significant structural problems facing India's agricultural sector. To explore this we used nationally representative rural price and wage data to estimate the least cost means of satisfying India's national dietary guidelines, referred to as the Cost of a Recommended Diet (CoRD), and assessed the affordability of this diet relative to male and female wages for unskilled laborers. Although we find that dietary costs have increased substantially for both men and women, rural wage rates increased more rapidly, implying that nutritious diets became substantially more affordable over time. However, in absolute terms nutritious diets in 2011 were still expensive relative to unskilled wages, constituting approximately 80-90% of female and 50-60% of male daily wages. Overall, we estimate that 63-76% of the rural poor could not afford a recommended diet in 2011. Achieving nutritional security in India requires a much more holistic focus on improving the affordability of the full range of nutritious food groups (not just cereals), a reappraisal of social protection schemes in light of the cost of more complete nutrition, ensuring that economic growth results in sustained income growth for the poor, and more timely and transparent monitoring of food prices, incomes and dietary costs.
2015 - 2016年，印度约38%的学龄前儿童发育迟缓，21%的儿童消瘦，超过半数的印度母亲和幼儿贫血。尽管营养不良问题在印度受到了广泛研究，但令人惊讶的是，很少有关于印度营养不良问题的研究探讨饮食的作用，尤其是在工资水平较低以及印度农业部门面临重大结构性问题的情况下，营养饮食的可承受性。为了探究这一问题，我们使用了具有全国代表性的农村价格和工资数据，来估算满足印度国家饮食指南的最低成本方式，即推荐饮食成本（CoRD），并评估这种饮食相对于非技术劳动力男女工资的可承受性。尽管我们发现男性和女性的饮食成本都大幅增加，但农村工资率增长更快，这意味着随着时间的推移，营养饮食变得更能负担得起。然而，从绝对意义上讲，2011年的营养饮食相对于非技术工人的工资仍然昂贵，约占女性日工资的80 - 90%，男性日工资的50 - 60%。总体而言，我们估计2011年63 - 76%的农村贫困人口负担不起推荐饮食。在印度实现营养安全需要更全面地关注提高各类营养食品（不仅仅是谷物）的可承受性，根据更全面营养的成本重新评估社会保护计划，确保经济增长能为贫困人口带来持续的收入增长，以及更及时、透明地监测食品价格、收入和饮食成本。
