The Role of Land Ownership and Non-Farm Livelihoods on Household Food and Nutrition Security in Rural India
.jpg)
1
Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre, Curtin University, Perth, WA 6102, Australia
2
Department of Economics, University of Western Australia, Perth, WA 6009, Australia
3
Australia India Institute, University of Western Australia, Perth, WA 6009, Australia
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editor: Hossein Azadi
Sustainability 2021, 13(24), 13615; https://doi.org/10.3390/su132413615
Received: 8 November 2021
/
Revised: 28 November 2021
/
Accepted: 2 December 2021
/
Published: 9 December 2021
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Health in All: Global Health and Sustainable Development Goals)
South Asia remains the region with the highest prevalence of undernourishment with India accounting for 255 million food insecure people. A worsening of child nutritional outcomes has been observed in many Indian states recently and children in rural areas have poorer nutrition compared to those in urban areas. This paper investigates the relationship between land ownership, non-farm livelihoods, food security, and child nutrition in rural India, using the Young Lives Survey. The survey covers the same rural households and children over the period 2002–2013 in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Our empirical analysis uses a sample of 1209 children (and their households) who were aged around 1 year in 2002. Our results show that large agricultural land ownership is significantly associated with better child nutrition (measured using height-for-age and stunting) and household food security. A transition from farm to non-farm work improves child nutrition, but only among landless households. While access to land is still critical for improving household food and nutrition security among rural households, there is a trend towards greater non-farm livelihoods, and a decline in reliance on farming, particularly among landless and marginal farmers.
View Full-Text
Keywords:
food security; child nutrition; rural households; India
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
MDPI and ACS Style
Vu, L.; Rammohan, A.; Goli, S. The Role of Land Ownership and Non-Farm Livelihoods on Household Food and Nutrition Security in Rural India. Sustainability 2021, 13, 13615. https://doi.org/10.3390/su132413615
AMA Style
Vu L, Rammohan A, Goli S. The Role of Land Ownership and Non-Farm Livelihoods on Household Food and Nutrition Security in Rural India. Sustainability. 2021; 13(24):13615. https://doi.org/10.3390/su132413615
Chicago/Turabian StyleVu, Loan, Anu Rammohan, and Srinivas Goli. 2021. "The Role of Land Ownership and Non-Farm Livelihoods on Household Food and Nutrition Security in Rural India" Sustainability 13, no. 24: 13615. https://doi.org/10.3390/su132413615
Find Other Styles
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
