Impact of Weather Shock on Food Insecurity: A Study on India
335
on food insecurity in India and also identify the socio-economic factors that affect
household level food insecurity. It adopts a novel approach to measure household
level food insecurity by taking into account nutritional requirement of an individual
on the basis of recommendation of the Indian Council of Medical Research (Government of India 2014). The available literature in this regard has mainly focused on
food security in India (Dev and Sharma 2010; Kumar et al. 2012; Brahmanand et al.
2013; Ittyerah 2013; Singh 2014), and a few others have studied food insecurity on
a regional basis (Agarwal et al. 2009; Chinnakali et al. 2014; Mukherjee 2016). But
till date, no study has been carried out for examining the impact of weather shock
on household level food insecurity in India.
This chapter has important environmental and socio-economic dimensions. As
discussed earlier food security is dependent on food production, among others, which
in turn is critically dependent on environmental factors like temperature and rainfall.
Most of the Indian farmers being poor are reliant on rain-fed agriculture. Weather
shocks—either in the form of excessive or deficient rainfall—may adversely affect
agricultural production which may make people more vulnerable to food insecurity.
Therefore, the main focus of this chapter is to examine the impact of weather shocks
on food insecurity of Indian households. Moreover, food insecurity is also associated with socio-economic factors like income, occupation, social group, religion etc.
Hence, this chapter also seeks to examine how these factors affect household level
food insecurity.
This chapter is organized in six sections. Section two outlines the materials and
methods. Section three discusses the extent of food insecurity in India and its variations across various social and religious groups. Section four outlines the model with
a brief explanation of the variables of interest. Section five discusses the regression
results whereas section six deals with concluding remarks.
2 Materials and Methods
This study is completely based on secondary data collected from the second round of
India Human Development Survey (IHDS-II) for the year 2011–12. The IHDS is a
nationally representative survey conducted jointly by the University of Maryland and
the National Council of Applied Economic Research. The IHDS-II covers a sample
of 42,152 households spread across 33 states and union territories, 384 districts,
1420 villages and 1042 urban blocks. The geographical composition of the sample
is shown in Appendix 1.
The IHDS provides data at the household level on a number of dimensions and
variables. The data are thoroughly cleaned and a few variables relevant for the present
study are taken into account while a few others are created from the data set. A detailed
analysis of the variables used in the study is provided in Sect. 4.
The main objective of the chapter is concerned about household level food insecurity. Hence household level food insecurity is measured as follows. The report of
the Expert Group (Rangarajan) to the Planning Commission (Government of India
335
on food insecurity in India and also identify the socio-economic factors that affect
household level food insecurity. It adopts a novel approach to measure household
level food insecurity by taking into account nutritional requirement of an individual
on the basis of recommendation of the Indian Council of Medical Research (Government of India 2014). The available literature in this regard has mainly focused on
food security in India (Dev and Sharma 2010; Kumar et al. 2012; Brahmanand et al.
2013; Ittyerah 2013; Singh 2014), and a few others have studied food insecurity on
a regional basis (Agarwal et al. 2009; Chinnakali et al. 2014; Mukherjee 2016). But
till date, no study has been carried out for examining the impact of weather shock
on household level food insecurity in India.
This chapter has important environmental and socio-economic dimensions. As
discussed earlier food security is dependent on food production, among others, which
in turn is critically dependent on environmental factors like temperature and rainfall.
Most of the Indian farmers being poor are reliant on rain-fed agriculture. Weather
shocks—either in the form of excessive or deficient rainfall—may adversely affect
agricultural production which may make people more vulnerable to food insecurity.
Therefore, the main focus of this chapter is to examine the impact of weather shocks
on food insecurity of Indian households. Moreover, food insecurity is also associated with socio-economic factors like income, occupation, social group, religion etc.
Hence, this chapter also seeks to examine how these factors affect household level
food insecurity.
This chapter is organized in six sections. Section two outlines the materials and
methods. Section three discusses the extent of food insecurity in India and its variations across various social and religious groups. Section four outlines the model with
a brief explanation of the variables of interest. Section five discusses the regression
results whereas section six deals with concluding remarks.
2 Materials and Methods
This study is completely based on secondary data collected from the second round of
India Human Development Survey (IHDS-II) for the year 2011–12. The IHDS is a
nationally representative survey conducted jointly by the University of Maryland and
the National Council of Applied Economic Research. The IHDS-II covers a sample
of 42,152 households spread across 33 states and union territories, 384 districts,
1420 villages and 1042 urban blocks. The geographical composition of the sample
is shown in Appendix 1.
The IHDS provides data at the household level on a number of dimensions and
variables. The data are thoroughly cleaned and a few variables relevant for the present
study are taken into account while a few others are created from the data set. A detailed
analysis of the variables used in the study is provided in Sect. 4.
The main objective of the chapter is concerned about household level food insecurity. Hence household level food insecurity is measured as follows. The report of
the Expert Group (Rangarajan) to the Planning Commission (Government of India