Public Expenditure’s Role in Reducing Poverty and Improving Food and Nutrition Security: Cross-Country Evidence from SPEED Data

Knowledge gaps remain as to how public expenditures (PE) contribute to key SDG outcomes, including eradicating poverty and hunger and improving food and nutrition security in sustainable manners (SDGs 1 and 2). This study partly fills this knowledge gap using the Statistics on Public Expenditures for Economic Development (SPEED data) and various country-level panel data. We find that greater PEs for agriculture and, to a lesser extent, health sectors consistently reduce poverty and improve access to basic water and sanitation services, reduce child stunting and overweight, undernourishment, and food prices. These relationships are somewhat stronger for countries classified as low- or lower-middle-income in 2000. Greater PEs for education and social protection, which have been generally higher than PEs for agriculture and health in terms of allocations, have had more mixed effects on these outcomes.