Anaka Aiyar

• PHD
• Professor (Assistant) at University of Vermont, Burlington

Lokshin and Radyakin (2012) present evidence that month of birth affects child physical growth in India. We replicate these correlations using the same data and demonstrate that they are the result of spurious correlations between month of birth, age-at-measurement and child growth patterns in developing countries. We repeat the analysis on 39 addi...

We provide an age-profile perspective and two classes of regression models that make progress on differentiating between two types of determinants of child health: health endowment effects provided to the child at birth; and health investment effects determined by the post-birth stream of health inputs provided to the child and the productivity of...

The last three decades have seen an increase in the number of targeted health insurance programmes being implemented in developing countries. However, little is known about their intra-household impacts on household members who are not the intended beneficiaries. Using variation introduced by a universal health insurance programme targeted to child...

While obesity across rural India has doubled in the last decade, research explaining such an unprecedented change is sparse. This paper shows that the rise in the incidence of rural obesity is associated with the process of structural transformation, especially within rural spaces. As the distance to nearby towns from the villages has reduced, urba...

Making transformative services such as healthcare accessible to low-income consumers is an ethical challenge of vital importance to marketers. However, most low-income consumers across the world are excluded from the market for such transformative services because of financial constraints arising from poverty. In this paper, instead of focusing on...

A growing body of literature has shown that people in the transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) community have worse health outcomes than cisgender (cis) people, including higher rates of poor mental health. Additionally, during COVID-19, TGD persons experienced higher rates of food insecurity. In this article, we extend the literature by looking at...

Globally, more than 1.2 billion people depend directly on nature for their basic needs. These nature-dependent subsistence communities (NDSCs) bear the brunt of environmental disruptions caused by climate change. Prevailing climate solutions crafted by external “experts” often pursue narrow technocratic objectives that erode the dignity of NDSCs. I...

Although less than a third of the population in developing countries is covered by health insurance, the number has been on the rise. Many countries have implemented national insurance policies in the past decade. However, there is limited evidence on their impact on child mortality in low‐ and middle‐income contexts. Here we document the child mor...

Advances in food security proceed unevenly within and across nations. A striking pattern emerges from analysis of >560,000 individual responses to the first globally comparable, nationally representative, repeated food insecurity survey, which is statistically representative of >96% of the world's population. We find the relationship between the pr...

India, which has long suffered from undernutrition, has seen a rapid rise in overweight incidence in the last decade and a half. These changes are characterized by significant within-country differences in overweight incidence that vary by gender and regional development levels. In this paper, we provide an integrative framework, linking the income...

Recent large-scale pandemics such as the covid19, H1N1, Swine flu, Ebola and the Nipah virus, which impacted human health and livelihoods, have come about due to inadequate food systems safeguards to detect, trace and eliminate threats arising from zoonotic diseases. Such diseases are transmitted to humans through their interaction with animals in...

Agricultural technology plays a vital role in building viable and sustainable food systems. The green revolution (GR) is a landmark example of how scale-neutral technology transformed agricultural production. However, one of the limitations of GR technologies was that it was concentrated to a few crops and to high potential regions where irrigation...

Existing safety net programs in India provide income and nutritional assistance during different stages of an individual’s life. Critics have pointed out to inefficiencies in the design and delivery mechanisms which reduce the effectiveness of these programs in benefiting the targeted population. In this chapter, we argue that safety nets should ac...

In this chapter, we deliberate upon the role of the non-farm sector in the food systems. We argue that livelihood diversification in rural India would lead to an overall economy-wide increase in productivity, and facilitate swifter structural transformation and poverty reduction. We highlight the role of the non-farm sector for job creation in rura...

Over the last three decades, policy interventions have resulted in a decrease in undernourishment by at least ten percentage points. However, undernutrition and micronutrient deficiency remain a critical public health challenge, especially in less developed states, while the number of overweight individuals has increased drastically in more develop...

Market access determines the income of agricultural households and incentivizes the cultivation of diverse crops. Markets in India are mostly unorganized with limited infrastructure limiting their ability to cater to quality requirements and specifications demanded by urban consumers. Therefore, parallel to traditional markets, direct linkages with...

Despite India’s per capita GDP doubling over the last decade, states like Goa compare to countries in Latin America, while states like Uttar Pradesh compare to low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa in terms of their development outcomes. In this chapter, we identify that comparative advantages that arise due to resource availability, agro-clim...

As India becomes the world’s most populous nation, the two central concerns for food security is how to increase and diversify food production. Although this is an opportunity for income growth for small farms, rectifying disadvantages owing to low economies of scale and poor access to capital, technology, and mechanization is critical to leverage...

Understanding the pathways through which climate change will impact food security is essential to creating robust food systems. First, we present scientific evidence to show that climate change will decrease crop and livestock productivity in India. Second, we show that climate change will impact health and labor productivity by increasing suscepti...

Despite India’s economic progress over the past two decades, regional inequality, food insecurity and malnutrition problems persist. Simultaneously, trends in overweight and obesity, along with micronutrient deficiency, portend a future public health crisis. In this book, we examine the interactions between India’s economic development, agricultura...

In this chapter, we sum up policy recommendations required for creating robust food systems and for moving the country towards a nutrition secure future. In our food systems approach, policy recommendations made are multi-sectoral with an emphasis on (a) improving agricultural productivity with a view to increasing viability of smallholder agricult...

Changing diets poses critical demand-side challenges for food systems. Increase in income, urban growth, processes of globalization and demographic changes have led to a reduction in the relative importance of cereals, while consumption of animal-based protein, processed and purchased foods have increased. We argue that such dietary transitions sho...

‘This book… brings together high quality research, real world pragmatism and an understanding of the politics of Indian food systems.’ – Lawrence Haddad, Executive Director, GAIN and 2018 World Food Prize Laureate ‘[The authors] have done a masterful job of [demonstrating] paradoxes of India's rapid economic growth concurrently with… persistent pov...

In India, economic growth happens side by side with increasing regional inequality. Stagnant under‐nutrition co‐exists with high over‐nutrition rates and subsistence agriculture farms exist along‐side large farms. This story of development is the outcome of sub national differences in their experience of structural transformation. In this paper, we...

The theory that links exporting behaviour and productivity consists broadly of two hypotheses-the 'self-selection hypothesis'-more productive firms venturing for exports and the 'learning by exporting hypothesis'-exporting leads to increased productivity. This study measures the productivity differentials between exporters and non-exporters for 120...