How well do foragers protect food consumption? Panel evidence from a native Amazonian society in Bolivia

Godoy, R and Reyes-Garcia, V and Vadez, V and Leonard, W R and Byron, E (2007) How well do foragers protect food consumption? Panel evidence from a native Amazonian society in Bolivia. Human Ecology, 35 (6). pp. 723-732. ISSN 0300-7839

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Abstract

The ability of rural people to protect their food consumption matters because it captures their economic vulnerability. How well do foragers protect consumption from adverse income shocks and does protection work equally well for all people in the household? We answer the queries with data from 156 adults and 169 children collected over five consecutive quarters from the Tsimane', a native Amazonian society of foragers and farmers in Bolivia. We estimate whether quarterly changes in the logarithm of consumption bear an association with quarterly changes in the logarithm of cash income while controlling for many confounders, including covariant shocks. We use anthropometric indices of short-run nutritional status to proxy for food consumption and use instrumental variables to abate biases from the endogeneity of income. We found that child consumption was fully protected from income growth, but adult consumption was not as well protected. Estimates of income elasticities of consumption fell toward the lower range of estimates from previous studies of farming and industrial societies. We present several hypotheses to explain how the Tsimane' smooth consumption

Item Type:	Article
Divisions:	UNSPECIFIED
CRP:	UNSPECIFIED
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Anthropometrics . Bolivia . consumption smoothing . income smoothing . Tsimane’
Subjects:	Others
Depositing User:	Ms K Syamalamba
Date Deposited:	03 Nov 2011 10:27
Last Modified:	03 Nov 2011 10:27
URI:	http://oar.icrisat.org/id/eprint/3605
Official URL:	http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10745-006-9099-9
Projects:	UNSPECIFIED
Funders:	Research was funded by two grants from the National Science Foundation (SBR-9731240 and SBR-9904318), a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and a grant from the Conservation, Food & Health Foundation
Acknowledgement:	Research was funded by two grants from the National Science Foundation (SBR-9731240 and SBR-9904318), a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and a grant from the Conservation, Food & Health Foundation. We would like to thank Jonathan Morduch for help with the analysis, Lilian Apaza and Eddy Pérez for helping to collect the information, and anonymous reviewers of Human Ecology
Links:	Author

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