Food, Economics, and Health

Food, Economics, and Health

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Food, Economics, and Health Alok Bhargava

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York

ß Alok Bhargava 2008 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2008 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 978–0–19–926914–3 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Contents

Preface Glossary

1. Introduction

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2. Demand for food and nutrients in developing countries

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3. Nutrition and child health outcomes in developing countries

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4. Child health and cognitive development in developing countries

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5. Fertility, child mortality and economic development

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6. Nutrition, health and productivity in developing countries

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7. Behavior, diet and obesity in developed countries

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8. Summing up and concluding remarks

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References Subject Index Author Index

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Preface

This monograph is based on a series of lectures developed for a course on food, economics and health that I have taught at various universities. Many economists and nutritionists interested in food policy issues have encouraged me to turn the material into a monograph because of the cross-disciplinary themes involved. One of the problems in social science approaches to food policies is that students and researchers are often unfamiliar with the literature in nutritional sciences. Similarly, nutritionists and epidemiologists are often not familiar with economics terminology, such as ‘‘endogeneity’’ of explanatory variables, that is relevant, for example, when one tries to explain individuals’ nutrient intakes by anthropometric indicators such as heights and weights. Further, the effects of under-nutrition in developing countries on outcomes such as children’s growth and cognitive development are recognized to be of utmost policy importance. Due to the obesity epidemic in developed countries, however, researchers also need to be familiar with the effects of diet and lifestyle on weight gain. Moreover, nutrition education programs in developed countries are partly designed by psychologists, so that specification of empirical models for food consumption and interpretation of the results inevitably require multi-disciplinary approaches. While it may seem a complex task to grasp the approaches in economics, nutrition and psychology, basic familiarity with these literatures is helpful for analyses of food consumption and population health data. This monograph attempts to bridge the gaps between different disciplines interested in food policy formulation. The material covered in the six main chapters emphasizes the use of longitudinal (‘‘panel’’) data from developing and developed countries for food policy analyses because the relationships between food intakes and health outcomes are complex. This complicates the presentation of methodological issues, and readers not familiar with statistical aspects can skip the details and focus on substantive findings. Moreover, undergraduate and graduate students in economics, agricultural economics, nutrition,

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demography, public health and multi-disciplinary programs can focus on aspects that are of interest for their disciplines. Readers interested in further details can refer to my published articles reproduced in Bhargava, 2006a. In addition, Chapter 1 in this monograph provides an overview of the contents, and the Glossary summarizes the terminologies used in the several disciplines. Moreover, certain unpublished results on issues of child development and gender bias in developing countries are included in Chapters 4 and 5, respectively. I hope that readers will find the presentation to be a useful introduction to scientific and methodological issues in food and health policy analyses, especially since diets and lifestyles affect the well-being of everyone. Last, I would like to thank the publishers of the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, American Journal of Human Biology, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Journal of Educational Psychology, Preventive Medicine, Journal of Econometrics and Indian Economic Review for their kind permission to reproduce certain tables from my previously published articles. Thanks are also due to Ms Jennifer Wilkinson of Oxford University Press for her efforts at improving the exposition.

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Glossary

24-hour recall

Recollection of all foods consumed in the previous 24-hour period

7-day food record

Record of all foods consumed every day for a 7-day period

anemia

Hemoglobin concentration of less than 12 grams per liter of blood for women (