Food quality, calories and household income

Emmanuel Skoufias, Vincenzo Di Maro, Teresa Gonzalez-Cossio and Sonia Rodriguez Ramirez

Applied Economics, 2011, vol. 43, issue 28, 4331-4342

Abstract: We investigate the relationship between calories, food quality and household per capita expenditure using regression and semiparametric methods on a sample of poor households from rural Mexico, where Programa de Apoyo Alimentario (PAL), a targeted nutritional programme, is operating. The semiparametric method yields an estimate of the elasticity between calories and expenditure of 0.39 below the median and 0.28 above. The corresponding estimates of the elasticity of the calorie price are 0.48 below the median and 0.45 above. We also examine the extent to which the expenditure elasticity of the calorie price is explained by substitution between and within major food groups. We find that there is a very high incidence of substitution within cereals (especially for poor households) and that between group substitution explains at most 59% of the income elasticity for food quality. These estimates suggest that the potential of a cash transfer programme to have a positive impact on the food diversity and the nutritional status of households is quite limited.

Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00036846.2010.491454 (text/html)
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:taf:applec:v:43:y:2011:i:28:p:4331-4342

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEC20

DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2010.491454

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().