The Impacts of Cassava on Child Nutritional Status and Household Food Security in Zambia

Abstract

This study utilizes data from the 1996 Living Conditions Monitoring Survey I (LCMS) conducted in Zambia to examine two important issues concerning child nutritional status. First, does adopting cassava as a primary staple contribute negatively to child nutritional status? Secondly, are household calorie and protein availability and dietary diversity pathways through which cassava influences child nutritional status? A five-step dummy variable indicating a progressively increasing proportion of calories acquired from cassava relative to calories from all primary staples was created to measure the importance of cassava as a primary staple. Two-stage least squares, which corrects for the endogeneity of total expenditure per capita ( a proxy for income), is utilized for regression analysis. All models control for socioeconomic factors such as education, household size, and the demographic composition of the household; and the regression results are corrected for the two-stage stratified sampling design. The main findings of this study are: large amounts of calories from cassava proportional to calories from all primary staples in the household diet have 1) a negative impact on household calorie availability; 2) a negative impact on household protein availability; 3) a likely negative impact on dietary diversity; and 4) a likely negative impact on child nutritional status.