INCOME EFFECTS ON UNDERNUTRITION

This article offers an approach to the measurement of the effects of shifts in budget constraints or other household parameters on under-nutrition. The approach is illustrated by using a large household-level data set on calorie consumptions, incomes, prices, and other household characteristics for the province of East Java in Indonesia. The twin objectives of the empirical work are to 1) estimate calorie intake functions for these data and 2) use those functions to simulate the effects of income changes on various measures of caloric undernutrition. These measures include the popular head count index and two alternative measures more responsive to the depth of undernutrition and to interpersonal variations in the severity of undernutrition. A consistent method of accounting for interhousehold differences in nutritional needs when assessing attainment is proposed, based on estimated calorie intake functions. Thus the caloric norm need only be predetermined for a specific reference person or household. -from Author