Education and the Vulnerability to Food Inadequacy in Timor-Leste

This paper uses a simple empirical approach to estimate vulnerability to food inadequacy using a cross-section data from the 2001 Timor-Leste Living Standard Measurement Survey. This measurement is based on the assumption that households are exposed to the same kind of shock. We find that the distribution of vulnerability to food inadequacy over education of household head is more significant than that of observed food poverty. Our results support the argument that senior primary and tertiary education can help reduce the food risk that households face, i.e., the risk that a household is undernourished. Thus, public spending on these forms of education can provide a form of buoy that favors the poor in Timor-Leste