More than goods: trade in welfare through foods

This paper examines the impact of trade openness over child and general population food security in Latin American countries, except for Haiti, Cuba and the Small Caribbean States, between 1985 and 2016. In order to do so, we regress 5 trade indicators over 6 food security indicators using a FE panel data model and controlling for macroeconomic situation and the number of food security programmes implemented by each country in each year. Our results suggest that there is a strong influence of trade over the reduction of undernutrition in its different forms, improving food security in Latin America. Imports have improved weightfor- height and height-for-age indicators due to improvements in food availability, both in nutritional variety and quality. This suggests a stabilization of seasonal fluctuations in food access and consequent prevalence of infectious diseases. On the other hand, exports seemed to have produced an income effect, which in turn has enabled the reduction of extreme forms of undernutrition and allowed for the purchase of more nutritious food.