Food insecurity dynamics in India: A synthetic panel approach
Biswabhusan Bhuyan, Bimal Kishore Sahoo, Damodar Suar
Abstract
This study examines food (in)security dynamics for India since the year 2000 using National Sample Survey data on household consumer expenditure. In the absence of true panel data, a synthetic panel approach has been applied to analyse food security transitions, in order to examine the movement of households both into and out of food security. The overall findings revealed that the maximum chronically food insecure households were 50.4 percent in rural and 46.1 percent in urban areas whereas the households which remained food secure were 39.8 percent in rural and 42.2 percent in urban areas. The maximum percentage of people who escape from food insecurity was 19.4 percent in rural and 18.6 percent in urban areas whereas the fall into the food insecurity in the rural was 29.2 percent and 30.2 percent in urban areas. The paper additionally evaluates food insecurity dynamics by income decile groups and different household identities, such as within the caste, religion, and gender of the households, which indicated that forward castes and Islam religion noticed a higher degree of food insecurity transition within the different caste and religious identities, respectively. Between the genders of the household head, the larger transition was observed for male and female-headed households, where male-headed shows inward and female-headed witnessed outward transition. The higher income groups are facing more inward and outward food insecurity transition in rural and urban areas. The results were robust to the under-reporting. This study provided a better understanding of food insecurity dynamics in India, which will help in effective policy design.