Protecting Calorie Intakes against Income Shocks

Stephanie von Hinke and George Leckie

Bristol Economics Discussion Papers from School of Economics, University of Bristol, UK

Abstract: Whether and how changes in economic circumstances or household income affect individuals’ diet and nutritional intakes is of substantial interest for policy purposes. This paper examines the extent to which, as well as how individuals protect their calorie intakes in the face of unanticipated shocks to household income. Our results suggest that households use substitution, disproportionally cutting back spending on non-foods to protect spending on foods, change the composition of the consumption basket, and increase the consumption of ‘cheaper’ calories. Taken together, we find that total nutritional intakes are almost fully protected against income shocks, with only very small changes in actual calorie intakes. Specifically, we find that 12-16% of the effect of permanent income shocks on food expenditures is transmitted to calorie intakes, with 84–88% protected through insurance mechanisms.

Keywords: Nutritional intakes; food expenditures; income shocks. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 I1 I30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages.
Date: 2017-06-30
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.bristol.ac.uk/efm/media/workingpapers/w ... pdffiles/dp17684.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bri:uobdis:17/684

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Bristol Economics Discussion Papers from School of Economics, University of Bristol, UK
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Vicky Jackson ().