College of Agriculture & Natural Resources

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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations.

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    DIET, FOOD SECURITY, SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS AND DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMS IN HOMEBOUND OLDER ADULTS IN THE UNITED STATES AND THEIR IMPACT ON HEALTHCARE UTILIZATION
    (2020) Ashour, Fayrouz A.; Sahyoun, Nadine R; Nutrition; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Homebound older adults may be at increased risk for malnutrition and social isolation, posing a potential threat to them aging in their communities and increasing healthcare cost. The Nutrition Service Program under Older Americans Act (OAANSP) was established to support older adults aging in place by delivering meals and providing nutrition-related services. Aims: 1) Examine diet quality of home-delivered meal (HDM) recipients; 2) examine direct and indirect associations between social relationships, depressive symptoms, food insecurity (FI) and diet quality; and 3) examine direct and indirect associations between social relationships, FI, diet quality and hospitalization. Methods: Data obtained from OAANSP Outcomes Evaluation study included: 1) client outcomes survey, 2) two 24-hour dietary recalls, and 3) Medicare healthcare utilization data. Dietary recalls examined diet quality by calculating 1) population-level mean HEI scores; and 2) usual vegetable and protein intakes. Diet quantity was compared to Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010 (DGA), and structural equation modeling was used to examine direct and indirect relationships. Results: HDM recipients and controls have high prevalence of FI, 22.4% and 16.5%, respectively. HDM recipients who did not receive a meal on day of dietary recall (no-meal recipients) had significantly poorer diet quality than HDM recipients who received a meal (meal recipients) that day and control group. Quality of overall diet for meal recipients, no-meal recipients and controls did not meet recommendations for several food groups/nutrients. Compared to DGA, HDM and complementary foods were low in whole grains, dairy, fiber, and surpassed upper limit of consumption for saturated fats, refined grains, sodium and added sugar. High FI was associated with greater depressive symptoms and lower usual vegetable intake in control group. High FI was associated with lower usual protein intake in HDM recipients and controls. Both groups were at high risk for protein insufficiency, which was associated with greater hospitalization in the control group. Conclusions: HDM recipients and controls have high prevalence of FI, poor diet quality, and insufficient protein intake. Increasing funding for OAANSP can allow program expansion and improvement of HDM. Validated tools to examine social relationships and additional contributors to FI are needed
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    Formal Savings & Informal Insurance in Villages: A Field Experiment on Indirect Effects of Financial Deepening on Safety Nets of the Ultra-Poor
    (2011) Flory, Jeffrey Allen; Leonard, Kenneth L.; Agricultural and Resource Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This thesis exploits a unique micro dataset that uses a natural field experiment to identify indirect effects of formal savings access on de facto ineligibles residing in the same community. Despite widespread interest in microfinance as a poverty-reduction tool, the indirect effects on the very poor of expanding formal financial services remain largely unexplored. This study examines evidence from a large field experiment which helps fill this gap. It also contributes to an important emerging literature on the indirect impacts of policy interventions in developing countries, often (incompletely) evaluated solely on the basis of how they impact participants and beneficiaries. In developing regions, households vulnerable to extreme poverty often benefit from long-standing local safety nets based on cash gifts and other transfers from relatives and friends, which help them smooth consumption across food-deficits and household shocks. To date, little is known about how these pre-existing practices are affected as community members begin adopting newly available formal financial services, and there remains much unexplored in the interaction of formal financial markets with informal safety nets. This paper addresses that gap by examining how formal savings expansion affects inter-household wealth transfers, with a particular emphasis on receipts by the most vulnerable. Using a rich panel dataset from Central Malawi that includes over 2,000 households, I find that experimentally boosting local savings uptake in rural areas leads to a strong positive effect on assistance receipts by non service-users during peak periods of hunger. The difference is strongest among the most vulnerable households. That is, the entrance of formal savings appears to complement local informal support systems for the highly vulnerable through an indirect mechanism, channeling greater wealth to such households during periods of food-deficits. The positive impacts of formal savings expansion on non service-users suggests that formal savings may have substantially greater benefits than would be suggested by focusing exclusively on the impacts experienced by the service-users themselves.