There is nothing more painful than seeing an infant crying for milk while parents are unable to feed a sufficient amount due to their limited purchasing power and a lack of affordability. In such a situation, parents often have to ration milk. This includes adding more water and reducing the quantity of powdered milk or decreasing the frequency with which they feed a child.

The rationing of infants’ feed, however, has serious implications in terms of their undernourishment and, thereby, compromising the physical and mental development of children. This also results in children’s increased vulnerability to diseases.

The ongoing economic conditions have further aggravated this problem in Pakistan. Soaring baby milk prices put low-income households in severe financial distress as a significant proportion of their monthly income goes to purchasing powdered milk for their children.

The inability to purchase baby milk is mainly because of greater demand, increasing prices, and the limited income of the households. This situation is aggravated due to poverty, unemployment, early marriages, women’s lower participation in the labour force, limited literacy and education, lack of family planning, and hence a greater birth rate and an uncontrollable population.

Insufficient consumption of milk by children results in undernourishment, stunting, overall poor health, greater health expenditures, and thereby the low quality of human capital.

High prices of baby formula induce parents to ration infant feed which has significant costs in terms of future human capital

Take the example of Mr Muhammad Imran, who resides in a periphery area of Islamabad and works as support staff at a university in Islamabad. Mr Imran spends one-third of his salary on purchasing powdered milk for his two children. Mr Imran is worried because half of his salary is spent on powdered milk, diapers, and medicines for his two children, despite opting for the least-cost options.

He said that due to his household budget constraints, he finds it difficult to buy something special for his children, not to mention his wife often drops her multivitamins dose prescribed by the doctor for her weakness. Unfortunately, these adverse socioeconomic conditions are rampant in Pakistani society, and they have serious implications for families and their children.

This is such an important and basic issue in Pakistani society, yet it does not get sufficient coverage in the media, not to mention there is hardly any discussion on this topic in public policy forums. As a result, no concrete actions have been taken to ensure that all parents can afford to buy baby milk for their infant children.

The ideal solution to this problem is the promotion of breastfeeding as it contains the necessary nutrients in the proper proportions, which develop immunity and protect infants against diseases. However, mothers from low-income households often lack sufficient food intake, and they are hence unable to produce and express sufficient amounts of breastfeeding for their infants.

It goes without saying that food security during children’s earliest years of development is critical to their subsequent health. Moreover, risks of early-age nutritional deficiencies result in irreversible damage and lifelong consequences in terms of children’s neurodevelopment and cognitive skills. Pakistan has a serious problem of under-five mortality and stunted growth.

Millions of children die yearly due to malnourishment and their subsequent lack of immunity to even very common diseases. This is not only the loss of human lives, but this has huge health and economic costs, not to mention the emotional and social cost and trauma for grieving families of infants who have died from malnutrition or diseases that could have been fought off if the babies had stronger health and immunity.

Strangely, the relevant government authorities are keeping silent on this important issue, and the big producers, including multinational corporations, are making profits at the cost of children’s undernourishment and diseases. These big corporations make fortunes by increasing the prices and/or decreasing the quantity of baby milk while millions of families suffer as their children are deprived of food which is an essential commodity and a basic human right.

It is also important to highlight that producers, in general, and food businesses, in particular, are involved in a shameless practice called shrinkflation. The term shrinkflation is referred to reducing the size or quantity of a product while keeping the price at the same level.

However, in some cases, the prices increase, and the size or quantity of a product decrease. This phenomenon is more prevalent than the common citizen can perceive and is also frequently practised by large producers of powdered baby milk. Adding fuel to the fire, some multinational corporations that produce baby milk do not print the retail price on baby milk cans or packs, allowing shopkeepers to charge whatever price they like.

The writer is a social protection consultant for the government of Pakistan

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, March 6th, 2023