The pathways from economic and social policies to improved food
security and nutrition for the poor often are not well
understood. Yet each day governments decide on policies that
ultimately affect their well-being. How households increase
their incomes, acquire food, improve health, or cope with
insecurity are important concerns that need to be examined in
order to devise policies to help eradicate poverty. Nearly all
attempts to study these issues have used snapshot
approaches—those that look at one point in time. These
approaches are limited in that they do not reveal anything about
the actual dynamics of poverty, food security, and their
consequences for nutrition and health. In Poverty, Household
Food Security, and Nutrition in Rural Pakistan, Research Report
96, Harold Alderman and Marito Garcia address these concerns by
looking at longitudinal data for a three-year period, 1986-89,
and analyzing fluctuations in incomes, consumption, savings,
nutrition and health-seeking behavior of 800 households in fi