Fiscal Consequences of Ensuring Low Hunger and Poverty in South Asia

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-228-6_7How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Fiscal policy; Sustainable Development Goals; South Asia

Abstract

South Asia has the highest malnutrition and hunger problem. India and Nepal are in the moderate category of the Global Hunger Index with high levels of child malnutrition. Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are in the serious hunger category, with the lowest number of malnourished children. However, poverty levels across South Asia have been decreasing, but the hunger challenge is worsening. As agriculture plays a lesser role in the economy, it is worth mentioning that the food production and distribution system also experienced a decline. Decreased agricultural spending has caused food prices to rise and hunger and malnutrition to persist. Against this backdrop, one of the major policy questions revolves around the role of fiscal policy in ensuring low hunger. Investigating the impact of government expenditure, revenues, and selected fiscal incentives on the agricultural sector is urgent. This paper considers the feasibility of investing more in sustainable food systems than food subsidies. Food subsidies are often a short-term instrument to manage the immediate price shock. Public investments in sustainable agriculture have a dual impact on stable output growth and lower malnutrition. The panel model shows a positive impact of hunger on fiscal deficit and a negative impact of government outlays on malnutrition prevalence.

Copyright

© 2024 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Swati Jain
PY  - 2024
DA  - 2024/06/12
TI  - Fiscal Consequences of Ensuring Low Hunger and Poverty in South Asia
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Multidisciplinary Studies (ICoMSi 2023)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 63
EP  - 77
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-228-6_7
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-228-6_7
ID  - Jain2024
ER  -