Why do the educated poor pay less price per calorie? Evidence from household-level calorie consumption data

Kalyani Mangalika Lakmini Rathu Manannalage, Shyama Ratnasiri and Andreas Chai

International Journal of Social Economics, 2022, vol. 51, issue 12, 1517-1537

Abstract: Purpose - While the monetary returns to education are well documented in the economics literature, the studies on non-monetary returns to education are scarce. The purpose of this study is to provide new insights into the non-market outcomes by exploring how education influences the food consumption choices of households and how these effects vary across different socio-economic groups using household-level calorie consumption data from Sri Lanka. Design/methodology/approach - This study uses two waves of Household Income and Expenditure Surveys – 2006/2007 and 2016. The methods adopted in analysing the data were descriptive statistics and the OLS regression model. Findings - The empirical results show that educated poor households pay less per calorie compared to non-educated poor households, highlighting the role of education in improving the ability to make better food choices and manage household budgets more economically. Practical implications - This study informs policy-makers of the importance of education for formulating food and nutritional policies, which aim to raise the standard of living of resource-poor and vulnerable households in Sri Lanka as well as other developing countries with similar socio-economic conditions. Originality/value - To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first to explore the impact of education on the calorie consumption behaviour of people in the Sri Lankan context using nationwide household surveys. Peer review - The peer review history for this article is available at:https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-01-2022-0007

Keywords: Education; Non-monetary returns; Calorie consumption; Household-level data; Developing countries; Sri Lanka; D12; I26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

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:eme:ijsepp:ijse-01-2022-0007

DOI: 10.1108/IJSE-01-2022-0007

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Social Economics is currently edited by Professor Terence Garrett

More articles in International Journal of Social Economics from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().