Agribusiness: An International Journal

doi: 10.1002/agr.21883pmid: N/A

Zhu, Chen; Fan, Shenggen

doi: 10.1002/agr.21851pmid: N/A

Ren, Yanjun; Liu, Weigang; Huo, Xuexi; Glauben, Thomas

doi: 10.1002/agr.21859pmid: N/A

Extensive studies have discussed the economic and welfare effects of social pensions worldwide, while scant attention has been paid to their nutritional effects, especially in emerging economies. Using multitopic longitudinal survey data of households and individuals in Kyrgyzstan covering four waves of 2012, 2013, 2016, and 2019, this study aims to examine the impact of an old‐age pension on the nutritional outcomes of the elderly and shed light on their underlying mechanisms. Our empirical identification rests on a propensity score matching with difference‐in‐differences estimation design to address the endogeneity problem of receiving an old‐age pension. Overall, the results indicate that receiving an old‐age pension has a significant and negative impact on body mass index and the probability of being overweight for males, while no significant impact of the old‐age pension has been observed for females. Receiving an old‐age pension has no significant effect on expenditure of food consumption, calorie intake, and macronutrient intake, while it significantly reduces the ratio of protein intake to total calorie intake. We also observe significant heterogeneity in the nutritional effect of an old‐age pension across various education levels and income levels; the negative nutritional effect is more salient for elderly individuals who are relatively poor or who have lower education. Our findings provide profound implications for policies targeting improving the nutritional status of rural residents in emerging economies through the implementation of the old‐age pension [EconLit Citations: H55, I15, I38].

Xu, Wenyan; Zhao, Qiran; Fan, Shenggen; Zhu, Chen

doi: 10.1002/agr.21856pmid: N/A

The agricultural subsidy is an important policy instrument that aims to maintain food security and promote agricultural development in several countries. China introduced its first nationwide agricultural subsidy (i.e., the direct grain subsidy) for farmers in 2004. This study examines the impacts of direct grain subsidies on rural residents' food consumption patterns and nutritional intake on an individual basis. Based on a nationally representative sample of rural households from the National Rural Fixed Observation Points Survey data collected by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of China between 2003 and 2015, high‐dimensional fixed‐effects estimates show that the direct grain subsidy has boosted rural residents' grain consumption but reduced aquatic products, eggs, and dairy consumption in China. Specifically, an increase of 100 Chinese Yuan in per capita subsidies is associated with a rise of 14.94 g in daily grain consumption but a decrease of 0.57, 0.46, and 0.90 g in aquatic products, eggs, and dairy consumption, respectively. Furthermore, direct grain subsidies intensified rural residents' dietary imbalance and declined their dietary diversity. Observed dietary imbalance can be primarily attributed to the subsidy encouraging households' self‐sufficient grain consumption, leading to excessive cereal consumption and relatively lower consumption of meat, eggs, and milk. Our findings suggest that direct grain subsidies emphasizing the production of staple grains may inadvertently skew farmers' food consumption and nutritional intake, which may require consideration when evaluating the overall costs and benefits of agricultural subsidy policies. [EconLit Citations: D12, H20, I12, Q18].

Ren, Jingru; Zheng, Xiaodong; Smith, Rodney; Fang, Xiangming

doi: 10.1002/agr.21862pmid: N/A

School feeding programs have served as go‐to policies for addressing child malnutrition in both developed and developing countries. While an increasing number of studies have investigated the health consequences of school feeding programs, empirical evidence regarding their effects on children's health inequality remains limited. This study examines the impact of China's Nutrition Improvement Program (NIP)—A program that provides free meals for rural students at the compulsory education stage—on rural children's health status and urban–rural health status differentials. The analysis uses data from the 2004–2015 China Health and Nutrition Survey. Leveraging county‐by‐county rollouts of the program, we employ difference‐in‐differences approaches as our identification strategy. The results show that the NIP significantly improves children's height‐for‐age z‐scores by 0.136 standard deviations. Moreover, we find that the NIP alleviates the inequality of opportunity in health between urban and rural children by 21.6% in pilot counties. These findings are robust to a series of validity checks. The effect is more pronounced among students who have a younger age, and live in low social status families. Our findings suggest that school feeding programs are effective in decreasing child malnutrition levels and reducing urban‐rural inequality in the long run. [EconLit citations: I10, I18, D63].

Zheng, Hongyun; Ma, Wanglin; Guo, Yanzhi

doi: 10.1002/agr.21863pmid: N/A

Improving dietary diversity and nutrition intake among rural households is essential to promote sustainable rural development. In this study, we examine whether nutrition knowledge training increases rural households' dietary diversity, nutrition intake, and total calorie intake. We consider three macronutrients (proteins, fats, and carbohydrates) and three micronutrients (vitamin C, iron, and zinc) to capture nutrition intake. The doubly robust inverse probability weighted regression adjustment estimator is employed to estimate survey data of 765 rural households collected by the Institute of Food and Nutrition Development, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of China. The results show that nutrition knowledge training enhances household dietary diversity, improves the intake of macronutrients in terms of proteins and fats and micronutrients in terms of zinc, and increases total calorie intake. In addition, the intake of nutrients and calories of males responds to nutrition knowledge training while that of females does not. The dietary diversity of females increases with nutrition knowledge training, whereas that of males is unaffected. {EconLit Citations: I12, I18, Q12, E24}.

Tan, Fuli; Wang, Jingjing; Guo, Yixuan; Deng, Taian; De Steur, Hans; Fan, Shenggen

doi: 10.1002/agr.21861pmid: N/A

Zinc acts as an important cofactor in the body and is essential for normal functions. Several zinc interventions have been implemented worldwide to improve the public's zinc status, but limited studies have assessed their cost‐effectiveness. To help inform decision‐making on zinc interventions to maximize benefits within a fixed budget, we took China as an example and evaluated the cost‐effectiveness of three interventions, that is, supplementation, food fortification, and biofortification. As an essential group at high risk of zinc deficiency, children aged 5–14 years, who account for 10% of the Chinese population, were selected as the target group in this study. We constructed a decision‐analytic Markov model to determine the cost‐effectiveness of interventions in China under different scenarios. In our model, biofortification through conventional breeding was shown to be the most cost‐effective approach in most scenarios. Compared with other interventions, zinc supplementation gained fewer quality‐adjusted life years at a higher net cost, suggesting that this common approach may not be optimal for large‐scale, long‐term implementation at the national level. While the robustness of the results was further confirmed by the sensitivity analysis, more research is needed to assess the cost‐effectiveness of addressing zinc deficiency with other interventions. Further clinical trials are also expected to evaluate the effectiveness of zinc interventions in reducing pneumonia cases [EconLit Citations: I18, Q16, Q18].

Liao, Fen; Li, Yan; Qing, Ping; Feng, Jie; Wang, Anxu; Li, Jian; Huo, Junsheng; Wang, Linjie; Chen, Tong; Sun, Jing; Mao, Hongmei

doi: 10.1002/agr.21858pmid: N/A

Cui, Yi; Glauben, Thomas; Si, Wei; Zhao, Qiran

doi: 10.1002/agr.21869pmid: N/A

The popularity of Internet usage in rural China is on the rise while improving the nutritional status of Chinese rural residents remains a major issue due to prevalent unbalanced diets and deficiencies in some nutrients. However, there is a scarcity of empirical evidence linking these two aspects. The relationship between Internet usage and dietary quality remains inconclusive in both developed and developing countries. Using data from a survey of 2053 households in rural China, this paper examines the relationship between Internet usage and dietary quality among Chinese rural residents by employing an endogenous switching regression model to address the issue of selection bias. The empirical results reveal that respondents' gender, age, years of education, and household income significantly influenced their decisions to use the Internet, and Internet usage significantly improve dietary quality of their household. The findings of the heterogeneous analysis show that the impact of Internet usage on dietary quality varies based on respondents' dietary knowledge, per capita annual income, and household food expenditure. Through mechanism analysis, we find that Internet usage can improve the dietary quality by increasing the possibility of online food purchasing and fostering a more positive dietary attitude. [EconLit Citations: I12, O15, O33].

Shen, Jiexi; Zhu, Zhanguo; Qaim, Matin; Fan, Shenggen; Tian, Xu

doi: 10.1002/agr.21864pmid: N/A

E‐commerce is gaining importance in the food sector of many countries, and its potential influence on people's access to food and dietary choices is yet to be thoroughly investigated. In this study, we analyze data from a food consumption survey conducted in rural China in 2021 to examine the impact of e‐commerce on individual food consumption patterns and dietary quality. Our results with instrumental variable models show that e‐commerce significantly reduces the consumption of staple foods, such as cereals and potatoes, while it increases the consumption of legumes, nuts, milk, and milk products, even after controlling for income and other confounding factors. Additionally, e‐commerce contributes to higher dietary diversity and dietary quality among rural households. In the face of shrinking physical markets in rural areas, it seems that rural e‐commerce can serve as an important mechanism to improve food access and meet the diversifying dietary demands of rural residents. [EconLit Citations: Q13, L81].