IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jageco/v71y2020i1p118-143.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Nutrition Transition and Changing Food Preferences in India

Author

Listed:
  • Cherry Law
  • Iain Fraser
  • Matloob Piracha

Abstract

We present empirical evidence on how changes in food preferences have contributed to nutrition transition, where the dietary pattern of households shifts away from traditional staples. Using household‐level time series cross‐section survey data for India, we estimate time varying demand elasticities, revealing evidence of the declining importance of cereals in Indian household diets. The estimates show that Indian demand for cereals has become more income inelastic and price elastic. We also find that cereals are a substitute rather than a complement to animal products in household diets. Since changes in elasticities can only be attributed to variation in utility parameters, this indicates that cereals are losing favour with Indian households. These findings have implications for Indian food policy design and implementation.

Suggested Citation

  • Cherry Law & Iain Fraser & Matloob Piracha, 2020. "Nutrition Transition and Changing Food Preferences in India," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 71(1), pages 118-143, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jageco:v:71:y:2020:i:1:p:118-143
    DOI: 10.1111/1477-9552.12322
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1477-9552.12322
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1477-9552.12322?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Christophe Muller & Nouréini Sayouti, 2019. "How Do Agro-Pastoral Policies Affect the Dietary Intake of Agro-Pastoralists? Evidence from Niger," AMSE Working Papers 1917, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France, revised Apr 2020.
    2. repec:hal:cdiwps:halshs-02532955 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Xinru Han & Ping Xue & Wenbo Zhu & Xiudong Wang & Guojing Li, 2022. "Shrinking Working-Age Population and Food Demand: Evidence from Rural China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(21), pages 1-15, November.
    4. Siddiqui, Zakaria & Donato, Ronald, 2020. "The dramatic rise in the prevalence of overweight and obesity in India: Obesity transition and the looming health care crisis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    5. Hussein, Mohamud & Law, Cherry & Fraser, Iain, 2021. "An analysis of food demand in a fragile and insecure country: Somalia as a case study," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jageco:v:71:y:2020:i:1:p:118-143. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0021-857X .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.