Publications
D’Souza, Anna and Sharad Tandon, 2019, "Intra-household Nutritional Inequities in Rural Bangladesh," in Economic Development and Cultural Change. 67(3), 625-657. (Available here)
Abstract: Using novel data from rural Bangladesh reporting individual-level food consumption and anthropometric measures, we find substantial inequities in the intrahousehold distribution of calories and nutrients, with male household heads reported to consume disproportionately large shares. There are also smaller body mass index shortfalls for heads relative to their spouses. Further, lower economic well-being and women’s disempowerment are associated with more inequitable calorie distributions. These findings have implications for the measurement of undernourishment, where aggregate household-level data misclassify the undernourishment status of nearly a quarter of the rural Bangladeshi population due to intrahousehold inequities.
Muhammad, Andrew, Anna D’Souza, Birgit Meade, Renata Micha, and Dariush Mozaffarian, 2017, "How income and food prices influence global dietary intakes by age and sex: evidence from 164 countries," in BMJ Global Health. 2(3) (Available here)
Abstract
Background: While income and prices are key drivers of dietary choices, how their influence varies by food category, nation, and demographics is not well established. Based on intake data for 164 countries and 11 food categories, we examine how income and food prices relate to food intake globally, including by world region, age, and sex.
Methods: We used 2010 intake data from the Global Dietary Database, the first database of consumption estimates for major food categories by country, age, and sex. We combined these data with national per-capita GDP and food price data. We estimated intake responsiveness to income and prices for each food category, accounting for differences by national income, world region, age, and sex.
Results: We identified several differences in intake responsiveness. For example, rising income was estimated to increase milk intake most strongly in Sub-Saharan Africa and fruit intake most strongly among older women globally. Comparing our intake results to previous findings based on expenditure data, we found more goods that exhibited declining intake in response to rising incomes, fewer significant relationships for a number of food categories, particularly for higher income regions, and whereas in prior studies, elasticities mostly decrease with national income, we identified food categories where this was not that case.
Conclusion: The results of this study show heterogeneous associations among income, prices, and food intakes. Policymakers should consider the price and income elasticities of certain foods, as well as the role of demographics within and across countries, as they address global nutrition and health challenges.
D'Souza, Anna and Dean Jolliffe, 2016, "A Profile of Food Insecurity Dynamics in Rural and Small Town Ethiopia," in Ethiopian Journal of Economics. 25(2), 77-112. (Available here)
Using panel data from the Ethiopia Socioeconomic Survey (ESS), representative of all people living in rural and small-town areas, this paper describes changing patterns of food security between 2012 and 2014. We examine four measures of food security – two consumption based (calories and dietary diversity) and two experience based (whether food insecurity was experienced in any month, and whether any actions were taken in response).Over all four measures in both years, the share of the food insecure population was never less than 25 percent. Disentangling chronic from transitory food insecurity is important for policy design and for estimating the total food insecurity count over time. For example, the average rate of inadequate dietary diversity was approximately 30 percent in both 2012 and 2014, but the panel data reveal that 46 percent of the rural and small-town population had inadequately diverse diets at some point over the period. While the cross-sectional estimates suggest similar patterns in levels and trends of the measures, the panel data reveal that there is very little co-movement of the measures. For example, observing that someone has improved in terms of dietary diversity does not reveal information as to whether she or he hassimilarly improved in terms of the experiential-based measures.
D’Souza, Anna and Dean Jolliffe, 2016, “Coping with Food Price Shocks in Afghanistan," in Food Price Volatility and Its Implications for Food Security and Policy, Eds. M. Kulkuhl, J. von Braun, M. Torero. pp. 543.581. Springer International Publishing. (Available here)
Abstract: In this chapter, we present evidence on household coping strategies from a nationally representative household survey collected in Afghanistan before and during the 2007/2008 food price crisis. We looked at changes in various dimensions of food security, including calorie, dietary diversity, and nutrient intake. And we look at the purchase of food on credit, the sale of productive assets, school enrollment, and migration. We found strong evidence that the wheat flour price increases affected the well-being of Afghan households, who had to reduce both their food and nonfood expenditures. The reductions in the value of food consumed were reflected in the reductions in the quantity and quality of food consumed, including reduced nutrient intake. Households reduced their nonfood expenditures across several categories, including healthcare, clothing, grooming, communication, transportation, cigarettes and tobacco, and culture. And households purchased food on credit more frequently. We failed to find changes in educational expenditure or school enrollment, the sale of productive assets, or migration. We used the unconditional quantile regression (UQR) estimator to identify how prices affected households located at specific points on the unconditional distributions (such as the 20th or 80th quantiles) of the food security indicators. The most vulnerable households, those at the bottom of the calorie distribution, cannot afford to make substantial cuts to their caloric intake since they are close to or below the minimum daily energy requirements; accordingly, we found no statistically significant decline in their caloric intake. Households at the bottom of the dietary diversity distribution—often very poor households—experience very large declines in dietary diversity as a result of the wheat flour price increases (although even households at the top of the distribution also experience substantial declines).
D’Souza, Anna and Dean Jolliffe, 2014, “Food Insecurity in Vulnerable Populations: Coping with food price shocks in Afghanistan," American Journal of Agricultural Economics. 96 (3): 790-812. (Available here)
Abstract: Based on data from Afghanistan collected prior to and during the 2007-2008 food price crisis, this paper illustrates that caloric intake is an ineffectual indicator for monitoring the onset of food insecurity. Unconditional Quantile Regression estimates indicate that the most vulnerable of households, which cannot afford to make substantial cuts to calories, exhibit no decline in caloric intake in response to the increasing wheat prices. In contrast, households with high-calorie diets experience large declines. The estimates also reveal declines in dietary diversity across the entire distribution of households. The most vulnerable households may be sacrificing diet quality to maintain calories, with the potential for serious and long-term health consequences.
Muhammad, Andrew, Anna D’Souza, and William Amponsah, 2013, “Violence, Political Instability, and Trade: Evidence from Kenya’s Cut Flower Sector," World Development. November. Vol. 51. 20 - 31. (Available here)
Abstract: We examine the implications of the violence and instability following the 2007 Kenyan elections and how it affected cut flower trade between Kenya and the EU. Using the Rotterdam demand model, we find that the post-election violence had a negative impact on EU imports from Kenya equivalent to €33 million - which is significant given the importance of flowers to Kenya's economy. Results show that even a short period of violence can have an effect on trade since instability in an exporting country causes importers to source from other countries perceived as less risky (persisting even when order is restored).
D’Souza, Anna and Daniel Kaufmann, 2013, “Who Bribes in Public Procurement and Why,” Economics of Governance. November. Vol 14 Iss 4. 333-367. (Available here)
Abstract: We study procurement bribery utilizing survey data from 11,000 enterprises in 125 countries. About one-third of managers report that firms like theirs bribe to secure a public contract, paying about 8 percent of the contract value. Econometric estimations suggest that national governance factors, such as democratic accountability, press freedom, and rule of law, are associated with lower bribery. Larger and foreign-owned firms are less likely to bribe than smaller domestic ones. But among bribers, foreign and domestic firms pay similar amounts. Multinational firms appear sensitive to reputational risks in their home countries, but partially adapt to their host country environment.
D’Souza, Anna and Dean Jolliffe, 2013, “Conflict, Food Price Shocks, and Food Insecurity: The experience of Afghan households,” Food Policy. October. Vol 42. 32 - 47. (Available here)
Abstract: Using nationally-representative household survey data and confidential geo-coded data on violent incidents, we examine the relationship between conflict and food insecurity in Afghanistan. Spatial mappings of the raw data reveal large variations in levels of food insecurity and conflict across the country; surprisingly, high conflict provinces are not the most food insecure. Using a simple bivariate regression model of conflict (violent incidents and persons killed or injured) on food security (calorie intake and the real value of food consumed), we find mixed associations. But once we move to a multivariate framework, accounting for household characteristics and key commodity prices, we find robust evidence that in Afghanistan levels of conflict and food security are negatively correlated. We also find that households in provinces with higher levels of conflict experience muted declines in food security due to staple food price increases relative to households in provinces with lower levels of conflict, perhaps because the former are more disconnected from markets. Gaining a better understanding of linkages between conflict and food insecurity and knowing their spatial distributions can serve to inform policymakers interested in targeting scarce resources to vulnerable populations, for example, through the placement of strategic grain reserves or targeted food assistance programs.
D’Souza, Anna, 2012, “The OECD Anti-Bribery Convention: Changing the Currents of Trade,” Journal of Development Economics. January. Vol. 91. Issue 1. 73 – 87. (Available here)
Abstract: This paper examines how criminalizing the act of bribing a foreign public official affects international trade flows using a watershed global anti-corruption initiative — the 1997 OECD Anti-Bribery Convention. I exploit variation in the timing of implementation by exporting countries and in the level of corruption of importing countries to quantify the Convention's effects on bilateral exports. I use a large panel of country pairs to control for confounding global and national trends and shocks. I find that, on average, the Convention caused a reduction in exports from signatory countries to high corruption importers relative to low corruption importers. In particular, we observe a 5.7% relative decline in bilateral exports to importers that lie one standard deviation lower on the Worldwide Governance Indicators corruption index. This suggests that by creating large penalties for foreign bribery, the Convention indirectly increased transaction costs between signatory countries and high corruption importers. The Convention may have induced OECD firms to divert their exports to less corrupt countries; while non-OECD firms not bound by the Convention may have increased their exports to corrupt countries. I also find evidence that the Convention's effects differed across product categories.
D’Souza, Anna and Dean Jolliffe, 2012, “Rising Food Prices and Coping Strategies: Household-level Evidence from Afghanistan,” Journal of Development Studies. February. Vol. 48. No. 2. 282-299. (Available here)
Abstract: This article investigates the impact of rising wheat prices on household food security in Afghanistan. Exploiting a unique nationally-representative household survey, we find evidence of large declines in the real value of per capita food consumption. Smaller price elasticities with respect to calories than with respect to food consumption suggest that households trade off quality for quantity as they move away from nutrient-rich foods such as meat and vegetables toward staple foods. Our work improves upon country-level simulation studies by providing estimates of actual household food security during a price shock in one of the world’s poorest, most food-insecure countries.