Universal food security program and nutritional intake: Evidence from the hunger prone KBK districts in Odisha
研究印度奥里萨邦KBK地区将食品援助计划从定向改为全民覆盖后，家庭营养摄入和饮食质量是否改善，发现该政策显著降低了卡路里、脂肪和蛋白质摄入不足的家庭比例。
This article provides evidence on the role of consumer food subsidies in improving nutritional intake and diet quality by evaluating the expansion of the government food assistance program coverage in the hunger prone state of Odisha in India. In 8 districts of Odisha, popularly known as the Kalahandi-Balangir-Koraput (KBK) region which is notable for extreme poverty and starvation deaths, the government did away with the targeted food assistance program in 2008 and made the scheme universal. Using a Difference-in-Difference methodology over two repeated cross sectional household surveys, this article finds that the shift from targeted to a universal food security program in the KBK region of Odisha has led to an improvement in the household nutritional intake and diet quality. Further examination suggests that proportion of households consuming below the recommended dietary allowance of calorie, fats and protein has declined significantly in this region post the intervention.