The bio-politics of subsistence: nutritional lock-in, human capital, and civic capacity

Why do politically salient food policies persist even when they may generate long-term developmental costs? This paper develops and empirically examines the concept of nutritional lock-in, a framework in which food-policy reforms can alter early-life nutritional conditions and, in turn, shape subsequent human-capital outcomes and dimensions of civic capacity.

We study Pakistan's 2008-2010 wheat-subsidy reforms, exploiting district-level variation in pre-reform exposure to the public distribution system in a difference-in-differences framework. Additionally, study also used three waves of the Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey (2006-07, 2012-13, and 2017-18) to find the impact on children heights-for-age.

Study find that children in districts with greater pre-reform exposure experienced a decline of approximately 0.28 standard deviations in height-for-age following the reforms. The estimated effect remains similar after controlling for child, maternal, and household characteristics and in sibling fixed-effects specifications. Complementary analyses indicate substantial changes in dietary composition, including lower dietary diversity and reduced consumption of several nutrient-rich food groups. District-cohort analyses further show that early-life nutritional shocks are negatively associated with later standardized mathematics achievement, although these estimates are correlational. Similarly, women in more highly exposed districts exhibit lower scores on measures of autonomy, mobility, media exposure, and community participation, which we interpret as proxies for civic capacity rather than direct measures of political behavior.

The study findings are consistent with the nutritional lock-in framework: food-policy reforms can have consequences extending beyond immediate fiscal or consumption effects to child nutrition, human-capital formation, and dimensions of civic capacity. However, the data do not identify the complete causal pathway from childhood nutrition to political accountability or policy persistence. The findings therefore motivate a broader view of food policy as a component of long-run human-capital and institutional development.