Demand for Nutrients in India: An analysis based on the 50th, 61st and 66th Rounds of the NSS

Raghav Gaiha, Nidhi Kaicker, Katsushi Imai and Ganesh Thapa

ASARC Working Papers from The Australian National University, Australia South Asia Research Centre

Abstract: In response to the Deaton and Dreze (2009) explanation of a downward shift in the calorie Engel curve in terms of lower requirements due to health improvements and lower activity levels in India, we develop an alternative explanation embedded in a standard demand theory framework, with food price and expenditure effects and shifting food and expenditure elasticities. The analysis is carried out with unit record data for three NSS rounds over the period 1993-2009: 50th, 61st and 66th. There are shifts in demands due to factors other than lower requirements. While an earlier analysis with the 50th and 61st rounds of the NSS over the period 1993-2004 (Gaiha et al., 2012) corroborated in part the Deaton-Dreze conjecture of lower requirements, the extended analysis for 1993-2009 reported here undermines this conjecture as time effects weaken over the more recent period (2004-2009). But there is also weakening of food price and expenditure elasticities over this period. Closer scrutiny of food preferences and taste for variety is necessary to understand better nutritional deprivation as also to design more effective policies to ameliorate it.

Keywords: calories; protein; fat; food prices; expenditure; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 D12 I31 I32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23
Date: 2012
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://crawford.anu.edu.au/acde/asarc/pdf/papers/2012/WP2012_08.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found

Related works:
Working Paper: Demand for Nutrients in India: An Analysis Based on the 50th, 61st and 66th Rounds of the NSS (2012)
Working Paper: Demand for Nutrients in India: An Analysis Based on the 50th, 61st and 66th Rounds of the NSS (2012)
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:pas:asarcc:2012-08

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ASARC Working Papers from The Australian National University, Australia South Asia Research Centre Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Raghbendra Jha (r.jha@anu.edu.au this e-mail address is bad, please contact repec@repec.org).