Food Security and Food Assistance Programs

This chapter discusses both food security and food assistance programs. The latter are a response to threats to the former, so the topics are best treated jointly. First I review the concept of food security, then presents a basic analytical model of food security, approached as a subtopic of the economics of health. The discussion then turns to the multiple threats to food security, available empirical indicators of food security, and various mechanisms for reducing vulnerability. Food security is linked to the consumption, production, and marketing of food, the functioning of factor markets?especially for labor?social safety nets, governmental and nongovernmental assistance agencies, initial asset and income distributions, and myriad other subjects across several disciplines. The aim of this chapter is therefore not to plumb each subtopic in depth so much as to identify the key issues and the relevant literatures to which readers interested in greater detail should turn. After tackling food security, the review turns to the related literature on government food assistance programs, the suite of distributive and regulatory interventions through which states try to ensure citizens' food security. A range of domestic food assistance programs are considered first, emphasizing in particular the United States' relatively well-studied programs. Then attention turns to international assistance programs, especially food aid. The next and largest subsection considers issues common to both domestic and international food assistance programs: additionality, targeting, intertemporal variability, direct and indirect costs, and incentives