Accessibility Indicators and Their Relationship with Food and Nutrition Security in Veracruz, Mexico

Abstract

Monitoring the state of Food and Nutritional Security is important because it allows the identification of trends towards improvement or deterioration in the health status of the population and the impact of strategies or policies in favour of the population. At the Observatory of Food and Nutritional Security (OBSAN) of the Universidad Veracruzana, data were collected with the objective of evaluating the relationship between some indicators of the accessibility pillar as part of the Food and Nutritional Security for the State of Veracruz, taking into consideration a period of time from 2018 to 2020. Seven indicators of the accessibility pillar were reviewed, which were those found available in the OBSAN for the year 2020. It was an analytical cross-sectional design using Instan Atlas software, and the coefficient of determination or R-squared was used as a correlation measure. The main findings were that a large part of the elderly population receives a universal pension, and that there is a relationship between the social backwardness index and people living in poverty and extreme poverty, but there is no correlation between poverty reduction and the number of beneficiaries of a universal pension, which was the indicator with the most data in the Observatory. It was concluded that there is no trend towards food insecurity up to 2020, but other indicators that would provide certainty, such as the cost of the basic food basket or food expenditure, were not correlated.