Self-produced food and vulnerability to poverty in Turkey

Abstract

Investigating vulnerability to poverty is crucial to the development of forward- looking policies to fight poverty. I investigate the consumption of self-produced food as a strategy available to households to mitigate vulnerability in two dimensions: food and non-food consumption. First, I show that the consumption baskets of rural households that produce their own food are different and less expensive than those other rural households, which rely exclusively on retail food purchases. Second, I also show that while self-producing rural households are as vulnerable to basic needs poverty as other rural households, they are much less vulnerable to food poverty. These results underscore the importance of the ability to consume self-produced food as a vulnerability-mitigating strategy even in middle- income countries.