Impact of legislature regarding ‘right to food’ and ‘wheat fortification’ on child malnutrition: Cross-country estimates

Abstract

Food security objectives of UN Millennium Development Goals have been constrained by the lack of policy coordination in the spheres of food, nutrition and public health. This paper investigates the relative importance of coordination of nutrition legislation on malnutrition indicators. Using a regression analysis, the variation of incidence of stunting and under-five malnutrition for the year 2013 is explained using policy variables. Results reveal that low levels of implementation of ‘wheat fortification’ legislation and low level of constitutional support for food security result in statistically significant increments in malnutrition. Significant reductions in malnutrition are observable for highly coordinated implementation of both of these legislative articles. We control for anthropometric variables, income level and regional fixed effects in order to remove potential biases.