Family Income and Health: Evidence from Food Consumption in China

With the substantial increase in family income, the prevalence of overweight has risen and become a serious threat to individual health and major health challenges in many developing countries. From the perspective of food consumption, this study attempts to shed light on the effect of family income on adults health outcomes of BMI and being overweight through three potential channels of nutrition intakes, dietary knowledge, and health insurance. Using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), the empirical estimations show adults BMI and the propensity of being overweight tend to increase with rising income in China. After identifying significant correlations between family income and potential channels considered, we conclude that approximately 34.14% and 33.75% of income effect on BMI and overweight could be explained by these three channels, especially, nutrition intakes taking the largest proportion is responsible for 26.96% and 28.08% of income effect on BMI and overweight, respectively. Additionally, we observe that there exists a significant heterogeneity in income-BMI gradients across various income quantiles and sub-samples, showing that income has higher effect on adults health for male and urban samples but it is not responsible for female sample. Acknowledgement : The authors acknowledge funding supports provided by National Natural Sciences of China (71742002; 71673008).