Food Insecurity and Public Agricultural Spending in Bolivia : Putting Money Where Your Mouth Is?

This paper explores the reduction of
food insecurity in Bolivia, adopting a supply side approach
that analyzes the role of agricultural spending on
vulnerability. Vulnerability to food insecurity is captured
by a municipal level composite -- developed locally within
the framework of World Food Program food security analysis
-- that combines welfare outcomes, weather conditions and
agricultural potential for all 327 municipalities in 2003,
2006 and 2007. Our econometric results indicate that levels
of public agricultural spending are positively associated
with high or very high vulnerability. The authors interpret
this to indicate that agricultural spending allocation
decisions are driven by high or very high vulnerability
levels. In other words, more agricultural spending appears
to be destined to where it is more needed in line with
previous findings in other sectors in Bolivia. This is
confirmed through a number of specifications, including
contemporaneous and lagged relationships between spending
and vulnerability. They also find evidence of public
spending on infrastructure and research and extension
services having a significant (but very small) effect
towards reducing high vulnerability. This indicates the
importance of the composition of public agricultural
spending in shaping its relationship with vulnerability to
food insecurity.