Understanding food poverty and food vulnerability situation

There is no denying the fact that over time, Bangladesh has performed quite impressively in terms of alleviating poverty.

Based on the upper poverty line, from as high as 56.7 per cent during the early 90s, headcount poverty gradually declined to 48.9 per cent in 2010 and then 24.3 per cent in 2016.

This reduction in headcount rates can be observed both in urban and rural areas with urban poverty having been reduced from 42.8 per cent in the early 90s to 18.6 per cent in 2016.

Similarly, rural poverty dropped from 58.8 per cent to 26.4 per cent in the corresponding years.

While understanding the poverty scenario of the country, we should however keep in mind that households of a lower income strata spend more on food than on non-food items.

According to the 2016 Household Income and Expenditure Survey of Bangladesh, households at the bottom 5 per cent of the distribution spend 62.5 per cent of their expenses on food while food consumption constitutes only about 33.7 per cent of expenditure for those at the top 5 percent. It is therefore crucial to analyse food poverty separately from overall poverty.

Food poverty can be defined as a situation where a household cannot afford the minimum resources necessary to have a nutritionally sufficient diet on a daily basis.

In the context of Bangladesh, food poverty is conventionally calculated on the basis of the cost of consumption of a certain bundle of food items which meets the bare necessity of daily nutrition of 2,122 calories per person.

Based on such a food poverty line, as much as 35.49 per cent of households are found to be food poor with rural food poverty being 38.25 per cent and the corresponding figure for urban dwellers being 29.17 per cent.

Therefore, more than one-third households are unable to meet even the minimum daily caloric requirement and among these households, 11.07 per cent are found to be chronically food poor.

This implies that even in the absence of any shock or unforeseeable event, these households will not be able to upgrade themselves from food poverty and will remain food poor in the near future.

On the other hand, the remaining 24.42 per cent of households are transient food poor who, with favorable circumstances, might soon be able to graduate from food poverty.

Such high food poverty in contrast with the commendable performance of overall poverty reduction primarily indicates that poverty reduction in Bangladesh has been driven by the increase in non-food expenditures.

With the poorer households spending greater amounts on nourishment, the food poverty scenario could be worse than overall poverty.

The 2019 Urban Socioeconomic Assessment Survey by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics also revealed a similar scenario where 21.25 per cent of urban households reported that they did not have enough food while 11.51 per cent said that they simply had no food in the house whatsoever.

While examining food poverty, it must however be kept in mind that the traditional poverty measure, which is an ex-post concept, might not be a comprehensive estimate for long-term welfare in households.

In this connection, vulnerability to food poverty captures the probability that, due to the presence of shocks, uncertainty or other unforeseen events, the food consumption of any household will lie below the predetermined food poverty threshold in the near future.

Amid the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic in particular, such an ex-ante concept can be considered as a crucial policy tool for analysing the state of welfare of households, especially at the bottom of the distribution.

In this connection, with the help of a vulnerability index, it can be shown that, in the presence of an economic shock like Covid-19, in addition to the existing food poor households, another 9.03 per cent of the previously food non-poor might find themselves unable to meet the minimum nutritional requirement.

Besides, around a quarter of households can be considered highly food vulnerable and according to our index of vulnerability, in normal circumstances, these households would be unable to get out of food poverty in the near future.

Based on such an analysis, certain household demographics, such as the presence of children and elderly members, not only increases the incidence of food poverty but also introduces a greater degree of food vulnerability.

In addition, employment status has also been found to play a crucial role in this regard. For example, those who are daily labourers or self-employed are found to be highly food vulnerable compared to those who are employers or employees.

With poor households spending a much larger amount of their income on food items compared to their expenditures on non-food items, especially in developing countries, it is often more appropriate to look at food poverty instead of general poverty.

Our food vulnerability analysis in this connection further emphasises the importance of incorporating the new food poor into related government programs.

In this regard, preparing a digital database against NIDs with the help of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, local administration and other relevant ministries is essential.

Besides, against the backdrop of this pandemic, understanding food poverty and food vulnerability can be of particular importance for identifying and targeting households with different degrees of food consumption deficiency for the government's social safety net programs and Covid-19 incentive packages.

For example, for the chronic food poor and highly vulnerable households, cash in kind transfers in the short run to smoothen their consumption variability might be more appropriate.

On the other hand, strategies towards small-scale employment generation might be suitable for the transient poor and vulnerable non-poor households.

In addition, combating urban food poverty requires targeting the food poor at slum areas in particular and small-scale and targeted employment based safety net schemes could be introduced in such cases.

Given that the country has achieved food security and has made commendable progress in food production, the emphasis should therefore be towards equitable distribution, focusing particularly on the food vulnerable.

The author is a professor of economics at the University of Dhaka