Abstract
In India, per capita cereal consumption (PCCC) is often measured against monthly per capita consumption expenditure (MPCE). Based on National Sample Survey (NSS) data, the relationship between the two is a little puzzling: in any given year, PCCC is positively related to MPCE across households, but over time, PCCC has been declining in spite of a sustained rise in MPCE. In other words, there is a contrast between cross-section and time-series data on the relation between PCCC and MPCE. The positive relation between the two in cross-section data also contrasts to some extent with international cross-section patterns: across countries, PCCC is lower at higher levels of per-capita expenditure.
Originally published as “Cereal Consumption and Per Capita Income in India”, Economic and Political Weekly, 47(6):63–71, 11 February 2012.
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The IHDS data set is available at http://www.ihds.umd.edu. For a comprehensive report on human development in India based on IHDS data, see Desai et al. (2010). The National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau (NNMB) surveys collect income as well as food intake data, but no expenditure data (see e.g. NNMB 1997).
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Since in the NSS report “the discussion of the basic results of the survey uses data collected with ‘last 30 days’ as reference period for all items of consumption as has been the usual practice in the quinquennial rounds” (NSSO 2006, p. 5), the uniform reference period also applies here, whenever we refer to NSS data.
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The Epanechnikov Kernel function is used to calculate the Engel curves with the STATA “lpoly” command.
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Deaton and Paxson (1998) show evidence across developed and developing countries that per capita cereal consumption declines with household size, keeping per-capita expenditure constant.
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Occupation dummies are included in the regressions, but they leave much room for occupational choices within these broad categories.
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Similarly, the differences for the states of Jammu & Kashmir, Jharkhand, Kerala, Karnataka and Orissa are larger than 10 %.
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See also Desai et al. (2010): “… we caution the reader about over interpreting IHDS estimates for state-wise or other smaller samples. The IHDS sample sizes are large enough to investigate the general patterns that determine human development outcomes, but if readers desire a precise point estimate of the level of some particular indicator for a sub-sample of the Indian population, they are better referred to sources such as the NSS or the Census.”
- 9.
See Deaton and Drèze (2009) for further details.
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Oldiges, C. (2014). Cereal Consumption Engel Curves and Income in India. In: Wolf, S., Casaca, P., Flanagan, A., Rodrigues, C. (eds) The Merits of Regional Cooperation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02234-5_11
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