Evaluating Food

Consumption
Pattern in
Bangladesh

Presented By:

M. H. Muttaki
2008221013
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Introduction
Eradicating hunger and malnutrition is a
high priority of aid agencies and
governments throughout the world.
Among several policies enacted to fight
malnutrition the most remarkable one is
to raise the income of the poor people.
The conventional wisdom suggests that
income increases should allow individuals
to increase their food intake and nutrient
consumption, which in turn should
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improve their nutritional status.

On the basis of this argument, billions of

dollars have been spent on programs aimed
at raising income of the poor with the
justification
that
it
would
reduce
malnutrition.
As a matter of fact the relationship between
household income and nutrition has been a
subject matter of numerous studies all over
the world.
Since calorie-income relationship have great
policy implications, such studies is of great
importance, particularly for poor countries.
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Literature
Review
Studies undertaken prior to the late
1980s seemed to have estimated relatively
small calorie-income elasticities for low
income households in developing world.
For instance Raphael et al (1986)
investigates the relationship between income
and calorie intake in rural areas of Nigeria,
using both nonparametric and parametric
approaches and found the elasticity as 0.18 .
Similar results were estimated by John
Gibson and Scott Rozelle in 2000 for Papua
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New Guinea.

Behrman and Deolalikar in 1987 found such

elasticities to be 1.18 for a sample from rural
south India.
Some studies have found the estimates
not significantly different from zero. Among
them some recent studies undertaken by
Alderman (1993), Subramanian and Deaton
(1996), Franque Grimard(1997), Gibson and
Rozelle
(2000),
Aubert
et
al.
(2006),
Aromolaran (2004) for Pakistan, India, Pakistan,
Papua New Guinea and Nigeria respectively.
Only two studies has been administered
regarding Bangladesh: Pitt and Hassan(1990);
Razzaque and Mahbub(2004). In both cases the
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data were not sufficiently large to represent the

Objectives
The main objective of this paper is to
examine
the
relationship
between
household income and food consumption
pattern in the context of Bangladesh.
To identify the determinants of food
expenditure pattern in Bangladesh.

Data
The data used here are taken from the
Household Income and Expenditure Survey
(HIES) conducted by Bangladesh Bureau of
Statistics (BBS) in 2005.
The HIES questionnaire surveyed households
on their daily purchase which were recorded
on the field for 14 consecutive days.
A two-stage sample design was adopted
where 504 primary sampling units (PSU)
were selected systematically from 16 strata,
where 6 were rural, 6 urban and 4 SMA.
The selected PSUs were further sub-sampled
and 20 household were selected from each
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PSU. The sample size finally stands at 10,080

Methodology
In the estimation of income-calorie elasticity
there arises empirical problem; like: how to
measure the nutrients responsiveness to
changes in income. Because income is often
measured very poorly and, consequently, is not
considered to be a good approximation for
permanent income. Like most estimation
procedure this problem is dealt with in this paper
by using total expenditure as a proxy for
permanent income as it is considered better
measured and is a better reflection of life-time
resources.
One of the popular method of estimating the
calorie-income elasticity is to employ a
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multivariate regression model, where the per

Econometric
Specification
Considering a set of explanatory variables
affecting calorie intake the following
equation is employed to estimate the
calorie-income elasticity :

Ipcmfexp = 0 + 1 lpcmtotexp+ 2
sqlpcmtotexp
+ 3lhsize +4 hhead_sex + 5
lhhead_age
+ 6 r_m0_4 + 7 r_m5_9 +8
r_m10_14
9
+ r_m15_55 + r_m_56 +

expenditure
lpcmtotexp = natural log of per capita household
monthly expenditure;
sqlpcmtotexp= square of natural log of per capita
household monthly expenditure;
lhsize= natural log of household size;
hhead_sex=
0=female);

sex

of

household

head(1=male,

lhead_age= natural log of household head age;

r_m0_4 = ratio of 0 to 4 years male to household
size;
r_m5_9 = ratio of 5 to 9 years male to household
size;
1
0

r_m15_55 = ratio of 15 to 55 years male to

household size;
r_m_56= ratio 56 years or above male to
household size;
r_f0_4 = ratio of 0 to 4 years female to
household size;
r_f5_9 = ratio of 0 to 4 years female to household
size;
r_f10_14
= ratio of 10 to 14 years female to
household size;
r_f15_55
= ratio of 15 to 55 years female to
household size;
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OLS Estimates
Model-1
Variables
lpcmtotex
p
Sqlpcmtot
exp
lhsize
hhead_sex
lhhead_ag
e

Coefficient
0.967621***

Std error
0.01035

P-values
0.000

-0.003915***

0.00070

0.000

-0.026053***
0.031465**
-0.007509***

0.0010
0.001323
.001294

0.000
0.017
0.000

Note: ***implies statistically significant at the 1% level, **

implies statistically significant at the 5% level and * implies
statistically significant at the 10% level for all three models .

Model-2
Variables
lpcmtotexp

Std error
0.01036

P-values
0.000

Sqlpcmtotexp -0.004032***

0.0007

0.000

lhsize

-0.258173***

0.00103

0.000

hhead_sex

0.002333*

0.00137

0.089

lhhead_age

-0.007189***

0.00138

0.000

r_m
r_m
r_m
r_m

-0.004455
-0.0038
-0.0013
0.00696***

0.00545
0.005
0.004
0.00254

0.414
0.488
0.756
0.006

_
5_9
10_14
15_55

Coefficient
0.955718***

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Model-3
Variables
lpcmtotexp
Sqlpcmtotexp
lhsize
hhead_sex
lhhead_age
r_m0_4
r_m 5_9
r_m 10_14
r_m 15_55
r_f0_4
r_f 5_9
r_f 10_14
r_f 15_55

Coefficient
0.96566***
-0.00433***
-0.25676***
0.002482*
-0.007235***
-0.003458
-0.004801
-0.000779
0.007134**
0.0032849
-0.0082689
0.0042056
0.0007445

Std error
0.010383
0.007039
0.001160
0.001385
0.001711
0.005534
0.005562
0.004223
0.003116
0.005572
0.005696
0.004535
0.003038

P-values
0.000
0.000
0.000
0.073
0.000
0.532
0.388
0.854
0.022
0.556
0.147
0.354
0.806
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Findings
The coefficient of lpcmtotexp for the
three models are 0.97, 0.96 and 0.96
respectively, which turns out to be highly
significant.
The square of the pre capita monthly
total
expenditure
variable,
sqLpcmtotexp , also registers statistical
significance with the expeceted negative
sign.
These two estimated coefficients,
1
therefore, suggest that the per capita
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 The high elasticity estimate indicates

that as income rises people in this dataset
spends a very large portion for food
consumption.
The negative coefficient of log of
household size, lhsize, implies that per
capita food expenditure decreases as
household size becomes larger.
Only the negative coefficient of log of
household head age, lhhead_age, here is
a bit surprising as per capita food
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expenditure is generally supposed to

After controlling for other explanatory

variables, the results in this paper show a
strong non-linear relationship between
household income and food consumption
in Bangladesh.

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Thank you

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