analyzing nutritional impacts of policies an empirical study for malawi summary widespread malnutrition in developing countries calls for appropriate strategies presupposing good knowledge about nutritional impacts of policies little previous work has been carried out in this direction especially with respect to micronutrients we use representative household data from malawi and develop a demand systems approach to estimate income and price elasticities of food demand and nutrient consumption these estimates are applied for policy simulations given multiple nutritional deficiencies income related policies are better suited than price policies to improve nutrition while consumer price subsidies for maize improve calorie and mineral consumption they can worsen vitamin consumption in urban areas

the economics of iron deficiency abstract this paper examines the evidence for a causal relationship between iron deficiency and a variety of functional consequences with economic implications motor and mental impairment in children and low work productivity in adults to the extent that we can be confident that iron deficiency does cause a consequence with economic implications this effect is quantified in economic terms illustrative calculations for 10 developing countries suggest that the median value of annual physical productivity losses due to iron deficiency is around 2 32 per capita or 0 57 of gdp median total losses physical and cognitive combined are 16 78 per capita 4 05 of gdp using a cost of 1 33 per case of anemia prevented from one of the few effectiveness studies of national fortification allows us to calculate the benefit cost ratio for long term iron fortification programs the median value is 6 1 for the 10 countries examined and rises to 36 1 including the discounted future benefits attributable to cognitive improvements this paper improves on previous work by including a much more thorough survey of the quantitative magnitudes involved and by incorporating effects of iron deficiency on cognition however more research is needed to verify the accuracy of the assumptions needed for this type of analysis

nonparametric and parametric analysis of calorie consumption in tanzania abstract the empirical literature on the demand for calories in developing countries suggests mixed results regarding the role of income and other socioeconomic characteristics on calorie demand this study employs both nonparametric and parametric methods to examine the impact of household expenditure and other socioeconomic variables on household demand for calories in tanzania using recent survey data the parametric methods include estimation strategies that ensure consistent estimates in the presence of behavioral endogeneity and measurement error under each estimation strategy we employ we find a strongly significant and positive relationship between household expenditure and calorie demand lending support to conventional wisdom that income growth can alleviate inadequate calorie intake the results also show a negative and significant relationship between food prices and calorie demand suggesting that effectively targeted food subsidies for very poor households may play a role in improving their calorie intake

impact of income on nutrient intakes implications for undernourishment and obesity the relationship between income and nutrient intake is explored nonparametric panel and quantile regressions are used engle curves for calories fat and protein are approximately linear in logs with carbohydrate intakes exhibiting diminishing elasticities as incomes increase elasticities range from 0 10 to 0 25 with fat having the highest elasticities countries in higher quantiles have lower elasticities than those in lower quantiles results predict significant cumulative increases in calorie consumption which are increasingly composed of fats though policies aimed at poverty alleviation and economic growth may assuage hunger and malnutrition they may also exacerbate problems associated with obesity

food preferences and nutrition in rural bangladesh t he dietary choice of households near subsistence levels of nutrient intake is one of obvious policy importance in many countries such as bangladesh national goals are set in terms of nutritional intake and there is heavy intervention in the markets for foods however little is known about the manner in which food preferences vary with food expenditure and nutrient intake the design of efficient programs to aid nutritionally deficient households in attaining minimal levels of nutrient intake requires information on all ownand cross price elasticities for both target and non target groups the net effect of a food price subsidy on the consumption of food nutrients cannot be predicted without knowledge of the complete elasticity matrix results presented below demonstrate that substitution effects can be so strong that the subsidization of certain foods quite often reduces nutrient consumption in this study demand equations for nine foods which allow for extremely flexible consumer price response are estimated from the individual budgets of 5 750 rural bangladeshi households estimation at the household level is preferred because it more readily permits the incorporation of household composition variables into the demand analysis such as household size occupation and employment status that are typically lost in aggregation there is also a greater range and variation in expenditure levels than found in grouped data this is of particular importance in the study of nutritional well being as it is the poorest households which are of special interest moreover the household sample provides sufficient degrees of freedom to estimate a simple varying parameter model which requires the estimation of 270 parameters previous econometric analysis of income class specific dietary choice has been limited and not altogether satisfactory pinstrup anderson de londono and hoover 1976 estimated complete sets of price elasticities for different income strata using frisch s scheme in order to study the impact of changes in relative prices on nutrient consumption their results are suspect because of the assumption of want independence necessary for this methodology to be valid alderman and timmer 1980 who were also concerned with studying the relationship between food price policy and nutrient intake by income classes econometrically estimated separate price coefficients for each income group by including slope dummy variables in their demand equations for rice and cassava in indonesia the inclusion of these dummy variables revealed surprisingly large differences in compensated price response across income groups although their results support the notion that poorer households respond differently to prices than the rich the limitations of their data constrained them to consider only two foods and to specify changes in price response which are discontinuous with respect to income i the formulation and estimation of the food demand equations is discussed in section ii below section iii presents the results of the estimation and discusses the nutritional implications of movements in relative food prices and other exogenous variables section iv summarizes our findings

calories conflict and correlates redistributive food security in post conflict iraq war torn iraq manifests itself as an ideal laboratory for food policy experimentation due to availability of unique data surrounding intra household calorie consumption and the presence of selected correlates including but not restricted to substantial disruptions to social infrastructure and fundamental public policy intervention among other findings expenditure elasticities are mostly positive and dramatically curvilinear with respect to wealth and lump sum redistribution of the iraqi public distribution system emerges as a feasible policy intervention extensions are discussed

regional differences pose challenges for food security policy a case study of india mahadevan r and suardi s regional differences pose challenges for food security policy a case study of india regional studies this paper examines factors affecting the calorie gap by considering the risk of calorie inadequacy or excess at the tails of food intakes non linear estimations accounting for rural urban differences in more and less developed states allow for policy making on two levels first the calorie gap was found to respond differently depending on the calorie status of the individual to various socio economic characteristics social assistance programmes as well as caste and religion second these impacts depended on rural urban differences and at other times on the development of the states these findings pose significant challenges towards achieving a balanced regional food security policy

examining the heterogeneity in calorie income elasticities a meta analysis abstract several studies conducted over the past three decades on calorie income relationship appear to give inconclusive results this paper reviews these studies and employs meta regression analysis to examine the potential publication bias in the calorie income elasticity as well as the impact of specific study attributes on the elasticities that have been reported in the empirical literature a total of 40 empirical studies which yielded 99 estimated elasticities were considered the results indicate the presence of publication bias in the reported elasticities besides the estimates revealed evidence of positive and significant empirical effect of income on calorie intake from all the studies that goes beyond publication bias study attributes such as ranking of the journal panel data used in the analysis whether expenditure was used as proxy for income year of primary survey sample size and numbers of the years of primary data were found to have statistically significant impacts on the reported calorie income elasticities in the literature

are estimates of calorie income fxelasticities too high a recalibration of the plausible range abstract the wide range of calorie income elasticities in the literature results in large part from the particular calorie and income variables used for estimation elasticities across four estimation techniques and four calorie income variable pairs for a sample of philippine farm households ranged from 0 03 to 0 59 estimates associated with calorie availability are biased upwards first because random errors in measuring food purchases are transmitted by construction both to calorie availability and total expenditures and second because the residual difference between family calorie intake and household calorie availability will often increase with income the calorie intake total expenditure variable pair gives the preferred elasticity estimate in the 0 08 0 14 range

how elastic is calorie demand parametric nonparametric and semiparametric results for urban papua new guinea this article seeks further evidence on the elasticity of calorie demand with respect to household resources the case presented is for urban areas of papua new guinea where just over one half of the population appear to obtain less than the recommended amount of dietary energy the relationship between per capita calorie consumption and per capita expenditure in urban areas of papua new guinea is not consistent with the view that income changes have negligible effects on nutrient intakes the unconditional calorie demand elasticity is approximately 0 6 for the poorest half of the population using parametric and semiparametric estimation to control for a wide range of other influences on calorie consumption does not materially reduce the size of the elasticity therefore these results are not supportive of growth pessimism and instead suggest that policies that increase urban household incomes will also act to reduce undernutrition

nutrient consumption and household income in rural mexico we estimate the income elasticity for a variety of macro and micronutrients using a sample of poor rural households in mexico the nutrientincome elasticity is estimated using both parametric and semiparametric methods a special focus is placed on the nonlinearity of the relationship between nutrient intake and income and on measurement error and endogeneity issues one major finding is that income elasticity for calories is close to zero when we control for measurement error issues for some nutrients namely fats vitamin a and c calcium and heme iron we find a sizeable positive income elasticity robust to the choice of the estimator and percentiles at which it is evaluated these nutrients are also those for which we find the largest deficiency in our sample in addition we find that for the poorest households in our sample the deficiency of total energy protein and zinc is not accompanied by a positive income elasticity

joint determination of food consumption and production in rural sierra leone estimates of a household firm model abstract this paper investigates the determination of food consumption for rural households in sierra leone that produce the foods which they consume a household firm model is estimated with seven commodities including five foods non foods and labor as compared to three commodities in past studies such food disaggregation permits tracing of the effects of socioeconomic variables on household nutrient availability household specialization in production is such that censored data is a problem a tobit approach is used to correct for this for most crops the own price effects on consumption remain negative when a price change is allowed to shift the budget constraint by effecting the profits from home production elasticities of calorie availability with respect to toal expenditure are found to be sizeable varying little by expenditure group the price elasticities of calorie availability are generally positive however an important exception occurs for price of the staple food rice this exception has several important policy implications which are explored

is the calorie income elasticity sensitive to price changes evidence from indonesia abstract the calorie income demand elasticity is an important parameter in the development literature and in the policy arena yet there is very little evidence on the extent to which it can be considered as an unchanging parameter or a time shifting parameter that for example changes with the economic conditions faced by households in this paper i use data from the 1996 and 1999 susenas surveys in indonesia to examine whether the relationship between income changes and caloric availability has changed and if so how using the same questionnaire the susenas surveys collect detailed information on more than 200 different food items consumed over the last seven days by 60 000 households at the same point in time in each survey year i use nonparametric as well as regression methods to examine two important relationships a the relationship between income and total calories and 2 the relationship between income and calories from cereals and other foods excluding cereals and root crops the empirical analysis finds that the income elasticity of the demand for total calories is slightly higher in february 1999 the crisis year with dramatically different relative prices compared to its level in february 1996 in addition the calorie income elasticity for cereals as a group increases while the calorie income elasticity for other food items decreases the latter finding is interpreted as behavior that is consistent with the presence of a binding subsistence constraint

will developing country nutrition improve with income a case study for rural south india aggregate estimates of food expenditure are consistent with such a possibility implying income expenditure elasticities close to one however the high degree of aggregation at which such estimates are made means that the considerable increase in price per nutrient as income increases is ignored and the nutrient elasticities are therefore overstated estimates for a rural south indian sample indicate that this bias is considerable and that the true nutrient elasticities with respect to income may be close to zero

health and hunger nutrient response to income depending on caloric availability in nepal using data from nlss iii we estimate nutrient income elasticities for macronutrients vitamins and minerals we further allow for differential nutrient demand response to income depending on where a household is in the caloric availability distribution we find that some nutrients are income inelastic indicating that they are necessity goods while others are relatively income elastic we further test and reject equivalent nutrient income elasticities across the caloric availability distribution households in the lowest calorie quintile have highly income elastic nutrient demand leaving them vulnerable to income fluctuations moreover as households meet their first order caloric needs they substitute away from cheap calorie dense staples toward more expensive nutrient dense foods finally for most nutrients households in the highest calorie quintile exhibit more elastic nutrient demand similar to households in the lowest quintile our results suggest that policies aimed at improving income will likely also improve household nutrient availability particularly for the most calorie poor households they further suggest that policies aimed at protecting poor households from negative income shocks will also likely yield nutritional benefits

the impact of food price increases on caloric intake in china world food prices have increased dramatically in recent years we use panel data from 2006 to examine the impact of these increases on the consumption and nutrition of poor households in two chinese provinces we find that households in hunan suffered no nutrition declines households in gansu experienced a small decline in calories though the decline is on par with usual seasonal effects the overall nutritional impact of the world price increase was small because households were able to substitute to cheaper foods and because the domestic prices of staple foods remained low due to government intervention in grain markets

multi country evidence on the behavior of purchasing power parity under the current float abstract using panel data for the united states and 22 other oecd countries for the current float this paper presents evidence that despite substantial short term perturbations purchasing power parity actually performed much better than commonly believed average rates of growth of real exchange rates over long horizons bear little relationship either to average rates of growth of nominal exchange rates or to average inflation differentials thus implying a close to one to one relation between average rates of growth of nominal exchange rates and average inflation differentials panel data variants of standard unit root tests suggest that the real exchange rates of these countries can be characterized as mean reverting

calories and poverty during a prolonged crisis abstract we study how calorie intake changes during prolonged crises by studying the calorie intake of households when exposed to short term and long term income and price shocks we use data from household surveys of mexican households during the income and price crises periods of 1994 to 1998 and 2006 to 2010 our focus is on low income mexican households those with the lowest 25 of expenditure per capita there is little effect on calorie intake following an income decline in the short run once households are exposed to reduced incomes for a longer period calorie intake falls households are able to weather short term fluctuations in income by shifting consumption to food items that are cheaper per calorie such as staple foods by consuming more foods at home instead of outside the home and by postponing expenditures on durable and semi durable goods when exposed to the income shock over a longer period of time we posit that households are not able to defer durable and semi durable purchases any more so their calorie consumption drops our results suggest that mexican households may be able to sustain calorie intake when faced with an income shock but it is less likely that they are able to do so if the income shock persists the government may want to support poor constituents when they are faced with prolonged crises

the demand for food and calories we investigate nutrition and expenditure in rural maharashtra in india we estimate that the elasticity of calorie consumption with respect to total expenditure is 0 3 0 5 a range that is in accord with conventional wisdom the elasticity declines only slowly with levels of living and is far from the value of zero suggested by a recent revisionist literature in these indian data the calories necessary for a day s activity cost less than 5 percent of the daily wage which makes it implausible that income is constrained by nutrition rather than the other way around

analyzing nutritional impacts of price and income related shocks in malawi simulating household entitlements to food the 2007 2008 food price crisis and the following global economic recession has temporarily increased the number of people to suffer from hunger while the impacts can be measured with precision only ex post for policy makers it is critical to get a sense of likely impacts ex ante in order to plan approaches to mitigate these impacts in this paper we adopt a very simple micro based simulation approach to analyze how changes in prices of specific food groups such as maize prices or prices for staple foods as well as how negative short term household level income shocks affect the entitlements to calorie consumption of individuals and how these changes affect overall food poverty we illustrate our approach using household survey data from malawi we find that food poverty is of serious concern with large within country variations we find that price shocks for staple foods have a considerable impact on food security with particularly strong effects on poor net food buyers in rural and urban areas this paper demonstrates that it is possible to estimate food security impacts of price and income shocks ex ante in a relatively straightforward fashion that can be done relatively quickly and that is suitable for cross country assessments of the likely impacts of shocks on food security and the design of appropriate response measures

changes in the united kingdom s natural relations in terms of society s metabolism and land use from 1850 to the present day abstract in this paper we present our understanding of how society and nature have interacted in the course of history in terms of society s metabolic interchange with the biophysical environment presenting a theoretical model we begin by focusing on the interface between society and nature society s natural relations as conceptualized by the idea of metabolism which draws upon marxist theory complemented by a systems approach the concept of metabolism portrays society as a system which has to establish and maintain a permanent throughput of energy and matter to produce and maintain society s material components the amount of resource flow is operationalized by using material and energy flow accounting methods empirically these methods are applied to the uk s economy in a time series approach from 1850 to the present day we discuss different aggregates of inputs such as domestic material extraction foreign trade of materials energy input and additionally give an account of land use change obviously these changing natural relations are linked to socio economic activities hence we make a first attempt to discuss different periods of socio economic development by drawing from a regulation approach and try to link them to physical indicators such as direct material and energy input and domestic material consumption dmc thereby we hope to contribute to a historical understanding of socio economically driven environmental change within the framework of ecological economics