IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/jintdv/v36y2024i1p415-434.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The cost of keeping‐up with the Joneses: Relative deprivation and food spending in Cameroon

Author

Listed:
  • Ebenezer Lemven Wirba
  • Ernest Ngeh Tingum
  • Francis Menjo Baye

Abstract

This paper examines the implications of keeping‐up with the Joneses for household food spending using a nationally representative data for Cameroon. Specifically, it employs the heteroskedasticity‐based identification strategy to address the endogeneity of relative deprivation and the recentred influence function (RIF) regression to account for heterogeneity in the effect of relative deprivation across percentiles. Mean regression results show that relative deprivation has a negative effect on food spending overall and the effect is stronger among rural households compared with urban households. The RIF regression results reveal that relative deprivation correlates negatively with food spending from the lower percentile up to 70th percentile, meanwhile, at the upper tail of the distribution, it has no significant effect. These findings have public policy implications for the taxation of luxury goods.

Suggested Citation

  • Ebenezer Lemven Wirba & Ernest Ngeh Tingum & Francis Menjo Baye, 2024. "The cost of keeping‐up with the Joneses: Relative deprivation and food spending in Cameroon," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 36(1), pages 415-434, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:jintdv:v:36:y:2024:i:1:p:415-434
    DOI: 10.1002/jid.3822
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/jid.3822
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/jid.3822?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fafchamps, Marcel & Shilpi, Forhad, 2008. "Subjective welfare, isolation, and relative consumption," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(1), pages 43-60, April.
    2. Kerwin Kofi Charles & Erik Hurst & Nikolai Roussanov, 2009. "Conspicuous Consumption and Race," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(2), pages 425-467.
    3. Kashi Kafle & Rui Benfica & Paul Winters, 2020. "Does relative deprivation induce migration? Evidence from Sub‐Saharan Africa," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 102(3), pages 999-1019, May.
    4. Angus Deaton, 2010. "Understanding the Mechanisms of Economic Development," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 24(3), pages 3-16, Summer.
    5. Erzo F. P. Luttmer, 2005. "Neighbors as Negatives: Relative Earnings and Well-Being," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(3), pages 963-1002.
    6. Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo, 2007. "The Economic Lives of the Poor," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(1), pages 141-168, Winter.
    7. Clark, Andrew E. & Oswald, Andrew J., 1996. "Satisfaction and comparison income," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(3), pages 359-381, September.
    8. Santiago Budria, 2013. "Are Relative-Income Effects Constant Across the Well-Being Distribution?," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 14(4), pages 1379-1408, August.
    9. Layard, Richard, 1980. "Human Satisfactions and Public Policy," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 90(363), pages 737-750, December.
    10. repec:pri:rpdevs:deaton_understanding_mechanisms_of_economic_development_with_abstract_apr is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Ravallion, Martin & Lokshin, Michael, 2010. "Who cares about relative deprivation?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 171-185, February.
    12. Zereyesus, Yacob A. & Embaye, Weldensie T. & Tsiboe, Francis & Amanor-Boadu, Vincent, 2017. "Implications of Non-Farm Work to Vulnerability to Food Poverty-Recent Evidence From Northern Ghana," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 113-124.
    13. Chen, Xi & Zhang, Xiaobo, 2012. "Costly posturing: relative status, ceremonies and early child development in China:," IFPRI discussion papers 1206, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    14. Sergio Firpo & Nicole M. Fortin & Thomas Lemieux, 2009. "Unconditional Quantile Regressions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(3), pages 953-973, May.
    15. Shlomo Yitzhaki, 1979. "Relative Deprivation and the Gini Coefficient," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 93(2), pages 321-324.
    16. Alpizar, Francisco & Carlsson, Fredrik & Johansson-Stenman, Olof, 2005. "How much do we care about absolute versus relative income and consumption?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 56(3), pages 405-421, March.
    17. Atsebi, Jean-Marc Bédhat & Ferrer-i-Carbonell, Ada, 2022. "Relative deprivation in Tanzania: Relative concerns and empathy," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 198(C), pages 389-408.
    18. Arthur Lewbel, 2012. "Using Heteroscedasticity to Identify and Estimate Mismeasured and Endogenous Regressor Models," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(1), pages 67-80.
    19. Punarjit Roychowdhury, 2018. "Visible consumption, relative deprivation, and health: evidence from a developing country," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 38(3), pages 1366-1380.
    20. Alejandro López‐Feldman & Roberto Porro, 2021. "Do social comparisons and negative shocks affect the subjective well‐being of the poor? Evidence from the Peruvian Amazon," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(3), pages 612-616, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Corazzini, Luca & Esposito, Lucio & Majorano, Francesca, 2012. "Reign in hell or serve in heaven? A cross-country journey into the relative vs absolute perceptions of wellbeing," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 81(3), pages 715-730.
    2. Alpaslan Akay & Lisa Andersson & Peter Martinsson & Haileselassie Medhin, 2014. "Positional Concerns among the Poor: Does Reference Group Matter? Evidence from Survey Experiments," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 23(5), pages 673-699.
    3. Martin Ravallion & Shaohua Chen, 2011. "Weakly Relative Poverty," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 93(4), pages 1251-1261, November.
    4. König, Tobias & Lausen, Tobias, 2016. "Relative consumption preferences and public provision of private goods," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Market Behavior SP II 2016-213, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    5. Lombardo, Vincenzo, 2012. "Social inclusion and the emergence of development traps," MPRA Paper 36766, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Andrew E. Clark & Claudia Senik, 2010. "Will GDP growth increase happiness in developing countries?," PSE Working Papers halshs-00564985, HAL.
    7. Akay, Alpaslan & Martinsson, Peter & Medhin, Haileselassie, 2010. "Does Relative Position Matter in Poor Societies? Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Rural Ethiopia," RFF Working Paper Series dp-10-05-efd, Resources for the Future.
    8. Antinyan, Armenak & Horváth, Gergely & Jia, Mofei, 2019. "Social status competition and the impact of income inequality in evolving social networks: An agent-based model," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 53-69.
    9. Thi Kim Cuong Pham & Phu Nguyen Van & Thanh Tam Nguyen-Huu & Thi Anh-Dao Tran & Kone Noukignon, 2019. "Subjective Well-Being and Social Comparison: A Comparative Study on Rural Thailand and Vietnam," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 129(6), pages 993-1029.
    10. Armenak Antinyan & Luca Corazzini, 2018. "Relative standing and temporary migration: Empirical evidence from the South Caucasus," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(1), pages 361-383, February.
    11. Antinyan, Armenak & Baghdasaryan, Vardan & Grigoryan, Aleksandr, 2022. "Charitable giving, social capital, and positional concerns," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    12. Akay, Alpaslan & Martinsson, Peter & Medhin, Haileselassie, 2012. "Does Positional Concern Matter in Poor Societies? Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Rural Ethiopia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 428-435.
    13. Vincenzo Lombardo, 2012. "Social inclusion and the emergence of development traps," Discussion Papers 13_2012, CRISEI, University of Naples "Parthenope", Italy.
    14. Ed Hopkins, 2008. "Inequality, happiness and relative concerns: What actually is their relationship?," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 6(4), pages 351-372, December.
    15. Irakli Japaridze & Nagham Sayour, 2021. "Dying from envy: The role of inequality," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(6), pages 1374-1392, June.
    16. Kingdon, Geeta Gandhi & Knight, John, 2007. "Community, comparisons and subjective well-being in a divided society," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 69-90, September.
    17. Xi Chen & Xiaobo Zhang, 2012. "Costly Posturing: Relative Status, Ceremonies and Early Child Development in China," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2012-070, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    18. Ravallion, Martin & Lokshin, Michael, 2010. "Who cares about relative deprivation?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 171-185, February.
    19. Atsebi, Jean-Marc Bédhat & Ferrer-i-Carbonell, Ada, 2022. "Relative deprivation in Tanzania: Relative concerns and empathy," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 198(C), pages 389-408.
    20. Mujcic, Redzo & Frijters, Paul, 2015. "Conspicuous consumption, conspicuous health, and optimal taxation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 59-70.

    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:wly:jintdv:v:36:y:2024:i:1:p:415-434. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/5102/home .

    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.