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Population and Environment
Published in: Population and Environment 2/2019

06-11-2019 | Original Paper

Does crop diversity at the village level influence child nutrition security? Evidence from 11 sub-Saharan African countries

Authors: Daniel Tobin, Kristal Jones, Brian C. Thiede

Published in: Population and Environment | Issue 2/2019

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Abstract

Diversifying crop production has been proposed as a means of reducing food and nutrition insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa, but previous empirical studies yield mixed results. Much of this evidence has focused at the household level, but there are plausible reasons to expect that the presence of crop diversity at other scales affects human health. Utilizing data from 11 sub-Saharan African countries housed in the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS)-Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) system, this study assesses the association between village-level crop diversity and both dietary diversity and height-for-age among young children. Our findings indicate that, overall, village-level crop diversity contributes to higher dietary diversity and improved height-for-age and that functional diversity measures best account for nutritional outcomes. These findings provide an important basis for future research to explore the importance of crop diversity at scales beyond the household and to consider other contextual determinants of child health.
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Appendix
Available only for authorised users
Footnotes
1
The sampling procedures involve a two-stage selection process, first of the enumeration area and then of households within that area. Within the enumeration area, households are identified within clusters that are georeferenced for the center of the cluster. To maintain confidentiality and protect respondents’ identities, the true coordinates are then randomly displaced up to 2 km for urban sites or 5 km for rural sites (with a small number of rural sites being displaced up to 10 km), and these displaced coordinates are reported in the publicly available files (see DHS 2018a for details).
 
2
The Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS)-Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) system is developed and maintained by the University of Minnesota Population Center.
 
3
Geospatial covariates have only been calculated for a subset of DHS samples, and in our sample, 2343 individual respondents were excluded because their households exist in clusters for which geospatial covariates were not calculated.
 
4
Only some samples in our dataset include anthropometrics for children ages 36–59 months, so we exclude these observations for consistency.
 
5
These crops include the following: barley, cassava, cotton, groundnuts, maize, millet, oil palm, potatoes, rapeseed, rice, rye, sorghum, soybeans, sugar beets, sugarcane, sunflowers, and wheat.
 
6
Such seasonal variation is less of a concern for our analyses of HAZ since linear growth is a function of chronic undernutrition. We present results of models that include survey-month fixed effects for both outcomes since this represents a conservative approach, but note that our findings are not sensitive to this decision.
 
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Metadata
Title
Does crop diversity at the village level influence child nutrition security? Evidence from 11 sub-Saharan African countries
Authors
Daniel Tobin
Kristal Jones
Brian C. Thiede
Publication date
06-11-2019
Publisher
Springer Netherlands
Published in
Population and Environment / Issue 2/2019
Print ISSN: 0199-0039
Electronic ISSN: 1573-7810
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11111-019-00327-4

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