 Is undernutrition responsive to changes in incomes?No 303, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank Abstract: This paper discusses the effect that changes in individual incomes have on aggregate undernutrition. Undernutrition depends not only on nutrient intakes but on other factors, including nutrient requirements - which may differ widely amongst people. The author offers an approach to measuring the effects of shifts in budget constraints or other household parameters on undernutrition. Using household data on calorie consumption, income, prices, and other household characteristics, theaper illustrates how to: (a) estimate caloric intake functions for that data; and (b) use those functions to simulatethe effects of income changes on various measures of caloric undernutrition. The paper finds that the income elasticity of measured undernutrition is considerably higher than the income elasticity of individual caloric intakes. The reason is that the density of people tends to be high in a neighborhood of requirement norms, and intake responses tend to be highest amongst those who are least well nourished. Recent arguments that intakes are unresponsive to income changes should thus be interpreted with caution. Keywords: Poverty Diagnostics; Environmental Economics&Policies; Economic Theory&Research; Inequality; Poverty Lines (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:303 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC. |
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