The Demand for Food and Calories

descriptionPublicationkeyboard_double_arrow_right Article 01 Feb 1996 English Publisher:University of Chicago PressJournal:Journal of Political Economy, volume 104, pages 133-162 (issn: 0022-3808, eissn: 1537-534X,

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Authors: Subramanian, Shankar; Deaton, Angus;

doi: 10.1086/262020

The Demand for Food and Calories

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Abstract

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.

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