Passing on dietary diversity? Livestock ownership in the Copperbelt Region of Zambia
Smallholder livestock ownership has potential for nutritional impacts in excess of its effects on income, and may be one method of reducing food insecurity through an increase in dietary diversity. Dietary diversity can be understood both as a measure of macronutrient and micronutrient consumption as well as a household’s ability to access a variety of food. As production of animal products tends to have a significant local aspect, there may be spatial spillovers allowing for improved nutrition both for the recipient households and for their communities as well. This research uses a unique dataset from Zambia to measure food security effects, and dietary diversity specifically, of livestock development. Using a balanced panel of 300 households from the Copperbelt Region of Zambia, this research calculates a Household Dietary Diversity Score (HHDDS) as well as a frequency-weighted dietary diversity score in order to evaluate the impact of receiving livestock on dietary diversity as a measure of food security. By exploiting the staggered rollout of livestock distribution by Heifer International, the organization distributing the livestock, the thesis uses a statistically similar treatment and control group. The results indicate that dairy cows are the most effective livestock studied for improving dietary diversity, both of the households that received them and of their neighbors. However, draft cattle recipient households also see significant improvements in their expenditure per capita, which in turn has a strong, significant, and consistent positive effect on dietary diversity. Thus, livestock improve dietary diversity through both a direct mechanism of consumption of animal products as well as indirectly through an increase in expenditure, some of which is used to purchase a larger variety of food.
Livestock, Dietary diversity, Food security, Dairy cow, Zambia, Zambian agricultural development
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign