An Examination of Calorie Demand Relationship in Pakistan

This article examines the long‐run relationship between per capita calorie intake, per capita income, and food prices using aggregate data for India, 1961–1992. Cointegration analysis yields an income elasticity of calorie intake of 0.34, while the food‐price elasticity is insignificant. Thus, economic growth in India, as measured by increasing per capita income, has significantly improved calorie intake; future income growth can alleviate further inadequate nutrition. However, significant improvements in calorie intake cannot be made directly by food subsidies. A further result is that calorie intake is Granger‐caused by income and not vice versa: income generation is unconstrained by calorie intake.

Daily per capita calorie intake in Bangladesh averaged almost 2,100 (kilo)calories in the 1960s but fell to 1,840 in 1972 following the war of independence in 1971, and only by 1987 did it reach 2,000 again. This article examines the long-run relationship between per capita income, food prices and per capita calorie intake using aggregate data for Bangladesh for 1962–97 and the recent cointegration procedure of Johansen et al., which permits structural breaks. Results show that a long-run relationship exists and that the war reduced average calorie intake permanently by 10 per cent. Impulse responses show that income Granger-causes calorie intake but not vice versa.

This research examines dynamic causal relationships between per capita calorie intake, per capita income and food prices using time series data for Turkey during 1965-2007. ARDL cointegration analysis yields an income elasticity of calorie intake of 0.22, while the food-price elasticity is insignificant. The results suggest that economic growth in Turkey has improved calorie intake; future income growth can alleviate further inadequate nutrition. This result confirms Engel’s law too. An augmented form of Granger causality analysis is conducted amongst the variables. The short-run causality testing reveals the existence of only one causality which is running from income to calorie intake. The post-sample variance decompositions indicate that income is the main cause of the increased calorie intake in the long-run. The estimated long-run model appears to have stable parameters.

In the last four decades, per capita calorie intake in Pakistan has grown from 1750-2450 (kilo)calories with an average annual growth rate of 0.90%. Nevertheless, 20% of Pakistan's population is still undernourished.This paper has examined the long-run relationship between daily per capita calorie intake and per capita income for Pakistan using cointegration analysis. Using annual data for 1961-1998, there is strong evidence taht such a relationship exists, and that a 1% increase in real per capita income raises the daily per capita calorie intake by 0.19 per cent. Further, causality tests indicate a unidirectional relationship from income to calorie intake; we find no evidence of causality in the opposite direction. This result substantiates Engel's law and provides no support for the hypothesis that income generation is constrained by calorie intake. There are two caveats to the results. First, data limitations restrict the number of observations to 38. Whilst it is not uncommon to find such small samples used in analyses of this type, some caution is necessary in interpreting the results as a consequence of the low power exhibited in some of the tests employed. Second, an aggregation problem arises from the use of national data since we are implicitly adding-up across non-linear relationships at the micro, household level; further, distributional changes in income have not been accounted for in the model. The implications of our results for development policies which seek to alleviate inadequate calorie intake in Pakistan are clear. First, the estimate of the calorie-income elasticity albeit low supports the conventional wisdom that income growth can alleviate inadequate calorie intake. However, nutritional status, measured in terms of nutrien t deficiency, may not improve: as income increases, individuals may diversify their diets from a taste perspective as they substitute more expensive sources of calories for less expensive ones. Further substitution may occur by consuming complements to good nutrition, such as clean water, good sanitation or women's time in child care.

Defining economic status of the household through household-based surveys remains a challenge and the measures vary across surveys and countries. This study identifies two exclusive measures of economic wellbeing of the household-wealth index and monthly per capita non-food expenditure (MPCNFE) and examines the comparative predictability of the two measures to predict the variation in per capita calorie intake across Indian households. Design This study has a cross-sectional design and households are the unit of analysis. Setting National Sample Survey consumption expenditure rounds, 2004-2005 and 2011-2012 for India. A total of more than 100,000 households in each of the two survey rounds were included in this study. The respective household heads were interviewed during the survey. In 2004-2005, a wealth-poor household from the lowest decile consumed 1881 kcal while a consumption-poor household (lowest decile) consumed only 1690 kcal, a difference of 11.3%. A slight overall increase in average calorie intake between the two survey rounds was detected (from 2016 to 2049 kcal; 2%), but the consumption-poor households (lowest decile) still had a lower average calorie intake than the wealth-poor households (1856 kcal vs. 1958 kcal; a difference of 6%). In terms of inequality, the consumption measure of economic well-being showed higher concentration index values in calorie intake compared to the wealth measure. From the multivariate OLS estimation, it was evident that the consumption framework explained higher variability in calorie (log transformed) intake across Indian households than the wealth framework. Consumption-poor households in India are more economically underprivileged and consume fewer calories than wealth-poor households. MPCNFE as a measure of economic wellbeing better predicts the household level variation in calorie intake compared to the wealth-based measure of economic wellbeing.

Vulnerability to food poverty is the probability of an individual falling below the food poverty line in the near future, which provides a forward-looking welfare analysis. Applying a nationally representative survey dataset, this study investigates the role of the New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS) in reducing food poverty and vulnerability among the rural elderly with chronic diseases. By designing province-specific food poverty lines to account for variations in the elderly’s needs, as well as the prices across provinces using a least-cost linear programming approach, the food poverty incidences among the elderly with chronic diseases are calculated. Applying a three-stage feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) procedure, the vulnerability to food poverty is estimated. Our results show that food poverty incidence and vulnerability of the elderly with chronic diseases in rural China is 41.9% and 35% respectively, which is 8% and 6% higher, respectively, than the elderly that are in good health. To address the potential endogeneity of pension payment, a fuzzy regression discontinuity (RD) regression is employed to investigate the effects of pension income on food poverty and vulnerability for different population groups. We found that pension income decreases the probability of being food poor and the vulnerability to food poverty among the elderly with chronic diseases by 12.9% and 16.8% respectively, while it has no significant effect on the elderly in good health.

The United Nations Millennium Declaration involved member nations in seeking to reduce extreme hunger and poverty measured against targets set for 2015. There may have been some success to date, 1 with the estimated total number of undernourished people falling by 17 per cent since 1990 -1992 (FAO 2013)). But there remained around one in eight people in the world who suffered from chronic hunger in 2011-2013. While the measured progress shows marked regional differences, sub-Saharan Africa remains the region with the highest prevalence of undernourishment. Progress has been slow in South Asia although the experience appears more positive in East and South-East Asia and Latin America.

Using nutritional information of food items acquired by each household, we evaluate how Mexico’s nutritional (calorie and protein-based) poverty has changed over time. Our extensive dataset combines household surveys from 1984, 1989, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2010. We find per capita calorie intake has decreased over time for both urban and rural households. The pattern is similar to the case of India, where a decline in calorie intake between 1983 and 2005 has been documented (Deaton & Dreze, 2009). In both urban and rural areas, nutritional poverty is increasing over time. For instance, the estimate of urban households who did not have an adequate calorie intake increased from 46% in 1984 to 64% in 2010. Unlike the case of India (Gaiha, Jha and Kulkarni, 2010), we find strong declines in calorie intake for the bottom expenditure quartile of the population, where calorie poverty in urban areas increased from 69% in 1984 to 95% in 2010. We find that increased prices of nutrients can only partly explain the calorie and protein intake drop. The decrease in intake can also be explained as consumers have shifted consumption away from food items and into other goods, such as personal care, communication, and vehicle services. Still, some of the drop in nutrient intake remains unexplained, especially for urban poor households. Our results also indicate that even though there is a decrease in per capita household calorie intake, children are obtaining a greater share of total household calories over time.

This article addresses the important but not widely investigated question of how calorie consumption in African low‐income households would respond to intrahousehold redistribution of income from men to women. Specifically, I use survey data on a sample of 480 households from semirural areas of south‐western Nigeria to analyze the response of per capita calorie intake to changes in women's share of household income, after controlling for per capita income and demographic characteristics at individual, household, and community levels. I also examine the effect of marginal increases in household income on per capita calorie intake conditional on the income distribution factor: women's share of income. My results suggest that redistributing household income from men to women would neither raise per capita food energy intake nor increase the quality of food calorie source of households in rural south‐western Nigeria. I also find that while the income elasticity of quantity of calorie intake is close to zero, income elasticity for quality of calorie intake is substantially positive. I conclude that neither gender‐neutral household income increases nor redistribution of household income in favor of women would substantially motivate increased amounts of food energy intake within households in the population under study. However, gender neutral increase in household income is likely to substantially increase the household demand for high‐quality food calorie sources.

Using nutritional information of food items acquired by each household, we evaluate how Mexico's nutritional deficiency (calorie and protein) has changed over time. Our extensive dataset combines household surveys from 1984, 1989, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2010. We find per capita calorie intake has decreased over time for both urban and rural households. The pattern is similar to the case of India, where a decline in calorie intake between 1983 and 2005 has been documented. In both urban and rural areas, nutritional deficiency is increasing over time. Unlike the case of India, we find strong declines in calorie intake for the bottom expenditure quartile of the population. We find that increased prices of nutrients can only partly explain the calorie and protein intake drop.

Poverty has remained largely unabated in Nigeria despite the efforts made in tackling it. Previous studies on poverty focused on total expenditure and did not adequately cater for regional differences in prices, needs, tastes and preferences. This study, therefore, examined the incidence, depth and severity of food poverty in Nigeria and produced a food poverty profile for the country based on zone-specific food poverty lines. The study used data from National Bureau of Statistics’ Nigeria Living Standard Survey, 2004. Linear programming technique in the spirit of the Food-Energy-Intake (FEI) approach, and the Foster-Greer-Thorbecke (FGT) index were utilized. The estimates of the study showed, among other things, that food poverty lines varied across zones, and food poverty was pervasive in the country and varied across zones. Thus policies and programs that will adequately increase people’s access to food and minimize the incidence of food poverty in Nigeria should be adopted.

Poverty and vulnerability to poverty are major challenges facing developing countries and have attracted the attention of development economists and policy analysts in recent years. This study examined the relationship between household food poverty and vulnerability to food poverty in Nigeria based on data from Nigeria Living Standard Survey (NLSS) (2004) obtained from the National Bureau of Statistics. A least-cost technique associated with the food-energy-intake approach was used to compute zone-specific food poverty lines based on the food baskets common to each geo-political zone; the Foster–Greer–Thorbecke (FGT) poverty index was used in computing food poverty incidence; the three-step feasible generalised least squares (3FGLS) procedure was used in estimating the magnitude of vulnerability to food poverty; cross tabulation and Pearson’s product moment correlation coefficient were utilised for the purpose of analysing the association between household food poverty and vulnerability to food poverty. The food poverty incidence was 50.23 % while the vulnerability to food poverty incidence was 61.68 % and the vulnerability to food poverty/food poverty ratio was 1.228. The food poor were more vulnerable to food poverty than the non food poor. There was significant positive correlation between food poverty incidence and vulnerability to food poverty incidence even though the correlation was not very strong. Thus, policies and programmes that will optimally reduce food poverty and vulnerability to food poverty should be adopted in Nigeria; these should be targeted more on the food poor. This is a major way to break the yoke of underdevelopment in Nigeria.

Serious illness can induce utilization of health services which can impose high costs on households at a time when household ability to earn income is hampered due to inability to work of the ill individual and caregivers and as such affecting the welfare of the household as a whole. This study was carried out to examine the effect of out-of-pocket health expenditure (OOP) on welfare of rural households in Kwara State Nigeria. Using a Two-stage sampling technique, 180 rural households were sampled out of which 175 households were used for the analysis of the study. The study employed descriptive statistics and Ordinary least square (OLS) regression in analysing the data collected for the study. The result of the descriptive statistics shows that on the average, household head in the study area was 42years of age with 7years of schooling, 22years of farming experience, about household size of 5 in adult male equivalent, a per capita income of N4,960, calorie consumption of 3151.46kcal/AE/day and monthly health expense of N676. The result of the analysis carried out to examine the effect of health expenditure on per capita calorie intake and income of households, shows that out-of-pocket health expense has a positive significant effect on both per capita calorie intake and income at 10% statistical level. The results of the study have shown the adverse effect of OOP on welfare of households in the study area and as such add to existing literatures on the welfare effect of health expenditure in developing countries. The study therefore recommends that the government should promote and sustain alternative health care financing mechanism like insurance schemes to assist poor households in benefiting from health services to reduce their OOP. Also, government should encourage the establishment of private health insurance schemes by creating enabling environment for them to thrive.

This study examined the effects of food price spikes on the quantity and quality of the dietary composition of farm households in Nigeria using the 2010/2011, 2012/2013 and 2015/2016 household survey panel data. The fixed effects models were estimated while controlling for participation in non-farm livelihood activities. Analysis indicated that seasonal comparisons of the average per capita daily calorie intake is lowest in the post-harvest season of 2011 (2511.44 kilocalories), which is higher than the average recommended intake. Results showed that rural households had lower per capita calorie intake and dietary diversity than urban households, which may be an indication of a shift in the calorie inadequacy from urban to rural farm households’ setting in Nigeria. In addition, income and education improvement are crucial for raising food calories and satisfaction of hunger needs among households with total food consumption expenditure of 79.0%. The study recommended that a combination of policy strategies, including income growth, agricultural development and targeted food distribution programs could reduce the problems of inadequate calorie consumption among farm households.
 Keywords: Food price increase, household, nutrition, dietary diversity

The nutrition support team (NST) works to improve malnutrition in hospitalized patients, and its role is expanding as more hospitals adopt NST. This study aimed to identify the clinical characteristics of NST-referred patients admitted to a tertiary hospital. The study focused on two groups: those who achieved the target calories, approximately 75% or more of their caloric needs relative to their body weight regardless of the period after the first NST referral, and those who improved their calorie intake 1 week after NST therapy. This study also analyzed the important factors affecting the achievement of target calorie intake and improvement in calorie intake to discover the focus of future NST therapy. This study examined 1,171 adult patients (aged ≥18 years) who were referred to the NST from all the departments within a tertiary hospital at least twice, with a minimum one-week interval between referrals, between January 1, 2019, and December 31, 2020. The study participants consisted of patients receiving <75% of their required caloric intake at the time of their first NST referral. Patients were categorized and compared according to whether they achieved their target calorie intake regardless of the period after the first NST referral and whether they improved their calorie intake 1 week after the NST therapy. We then identified factors affecting target caloric achievement and improvement in calorie intake. The group that achieved the target calorie intake had a lower proportion of neuro department patients (31.3%), a higher proportion of patients receiving intensive care unit (ICU) care (31.9%), and a longer ICU stay (p < 0.001) than the group that did not achieve the target calorie intake. Neuro department admission negatively affected target caloric achievement [adjusted odds ratio (aOR) = 0.305, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.150-0.617], whereas the length of ICU stay positively affected target caloric achievement (aOR = 1.025, 95% CI = 1.007-1.043). The proportion of neuro department patients was also low (42.5%) in the group with improved calorie intake 1 week after NST therapy. Neuro department admission was a negative factor (aOR = 0.376, 95% CI = 0.264-0.537) affecting the improvement in calorie intake. NST therapy significantly improved clinical outcomes for inpatients at nutritional risk. Because achieving target calories and improving calorie intake in neuro department patients is difficult, it is necessary to actively refer them to NST to achieve the target calories and improve calorie intake. Furthermore, because a longer ICU stay positively affects target calorie achievement, the system for ICU nutrition therapy should be expanded and implemented for general-ward patients, including neurological patients.