Global Nutrition Impacts of Rapid Economic Growth in China and India1 By

Despite record global economic growth in past decade – malnutrition remains a serious problem in many parts of the world. According to the United Nations ’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), about 800 million people (17 % of the world’s population) remain malnourished. For these households at a subsistence level of income, changes in commodity market conditions, as may arise from changes in global economic growth and/or trade policy can have serious consequences for nutritional intake. Even a small decline in diet quality can have substantial adverse impacts on health status. On the other hand, a modest income boost, or lower food prices, could have extremely positive impacts. Previously, the links between changes in the global economy and nutritional outcomes have been explored by a relatively wide range of authors (e.g., Fang et al., 2006; Rosegrant et al., 2005). The goal of this paper is to offer modest extensions of this previous work in three directions. First of all, unlike many of the papers in the nutrition area, we seek to account for the behavioral response of low income households in the face of changing prices and incomes. Clearly when households are faced with a rise in the price of food products