Nutrient consumption in India: Evidence from a village study

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/rode.12679
• Author: Indranil Dutta,Prasanta K. Pattanaik,Shruti Kapoor
• Published date: 01 August 2020
• Date: 01 August 2020

Rev Dev Econ. 2020;24:855–877.

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855

wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/rode

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INTRODUCTION

Nutrition is universally regarded as a core dimension in any evaluation of well-being. Policy initiatives

from governments and multilateral agencies have increasingly focused on nutrition, given the high

returns from investing in it (Economist, 2012; Development Initiatives, 2017; World Bank, 2006).

Received: 7 October 2019

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Revised: 11 March 2020

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Accepted: 19 March 2020

DOI: 10.1111/rode.12679

REGULAR ARTICLE

Nutrient consumption in India: Evidence from a

village study

IndranilDutta1

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ShrutiKapoor2

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Prasanta K.Pattanaik2

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction

in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2020 The Authors. Review of Development Economics published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd

1Department of Economics, University of

Manchester, Manchester, UK

2Department of Economics, University of

California, Riverside, CA, USA

Correspondence

Indranil Dutta, Department of Economics,

University of Manchester, Arthur Lewis

Building, 3.010, Manchester, UK.

Email: i.dutta@manchester.ac.uk

Abstract

Adequate nutrition is generally regarded as a core dimen-

sion in any evaluation of well-being. In the context of India,

a country with a high prevalence of poor nutrition, there is a

dearth of nutrition studies with adequate coverage and com-

parability. Using primary data on food consumption from a

village in a poorer state of India, we study the consumption

of five key nutrients, namely, calories, protein, carbohy-

drates, calcium and iron. Among the various determinants

of nutrition, we find that expenditure has a significant im-

pact on nutrition and the expenditure elasticity of nutrition

is comparatively high for all the key nutrients. By correct-

ing for potential endogeneity, we demonstrate a causal link

from expenditure and food subsidy provided by the public

distribution system to nutritional intake. There is some evi-

dence that household characteristics such as household size

and gender of the household head matter for nutrition; how-

ever, they are not robust under various specifications.

JEL CLASSIFICATION

I1; I38; O12; O53

856

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DUTTA eT Al.

Despite this increasing interest in nutrition, for many developing countries, there is a dearth of detailed

studies focusing on nutrient intake (Haddad etal., 2015). In the context of India, a country with high

levels of stunting and wasting, recent national surveys on nutrition suffer from issues of compara-

bility and lack of coverage, particularly for regions with high nutritional deficiencies (John, Knebel,

Haddad, & Menon, 2015). This paper uses primary village-level data from a poor region in India

to investigate both macro- and micro-nutrient consumption. Specifically, we study the consumption

of three macro-nutrients (calories, protein and carbohydrates) and two micro-nutrients (calcium and

iron). In addition to quantifying the level of nutritional intake in the village, we examine the causal

factors that impact nutrient consumption.

India presents a rather puzzling case when it comes to nutrition. In an early pioneering study,

going against the prevailing wisdom and using ICRISAT (International Crops Research Institute for

the Semi-arid Tropics) village-level data from India, Behrman and Deolalikar (1987) demonstrated

that income elasticities of demand for macro- and micro-nutrients are close to zero. They implied

that increases in income would not necessarily be translated into increased nutrient consumption.

They attributed their findings to strong preferences for particular kinds of diet. Using nationally rep-

resentative data from the National Sample Survey (NSS), Subramanian and Deaton (1996) found that

the expenditure elasticity for calorie consumption varies between 0.3 and 0.5.1 Analyzing NSS data,

Deaton and Drèze (2009) found that, contrary to popular expectations, while income had increased,

calorie intake had declined over time. This held true across the board for all income categories. They

explained this puzzle mainly in terms of a reduced need for calories arising from a shift toward more

sedentary jobs over time and overall improvement in health. Focusing on fats and proteins in addition

to calories, Gaiha, Jha, and Kulkarni (2013) provide an alternative hypothesis whereby the decrease in

demand for these nutrients is mainly due to a decrease in the consumption of food products resulting

from higher prices.

Given the diverging views in the literature on both the trends and determinants of nutrition in India,

there is a need for detailed micro-level studies on nutrition to enhance our understanding in several

ways. First, such micro-level studies allow us to explore the specific problem in greater detail than is

often possible in the case of national studies for a very large country such as India. Second, in study-

ing the problem in a small area, it is often easier to identify the impact of the local social and cultural

environment; the insights gained in this fashion may, in turn, suggest hypotheses which can be tested

at the state or national level. It is in this spirit that we have collected primary data from the village of

Mahidharpada in Odisha, India. Our research is also motivated by village studies in economics such

as those undertaken by the London School of Economics (LSE) Palanpur Study Group (Bliss & Stern,

1982; Himanshu & Stern, 2018; Lanjouw & Stern, 1998), the ICRISAT village studies (Behrman &

Deolalikar, 1987; Dercon, Krishnan, & Krutikova, 2013) and Townsend’s (2016) Thai village studies.

Although one has to be cautious about drawing any general conclusions from village studies, they

often capture the changes happening in the country at large. In the case of Palanpur, Stern (2017)

claims that changes in India are reflected in the changes in the village, and long-term study of the

village helps in understanding the broader changes happening in India. Thus, while recognizing the

limitations of village studies such as ours, we believe that they can serve as useful supplements for

corresponding studies on a much larger scale.

We contribute to the existing literature in several ways. We believe that, after the initial set of

papers, such as Behrman (1988a, 1988b) and Behrman and Deolalikar (1987), which study nutrition

at the village level using ICRISAT data, ours is the first paper to undertake a detailed analysis of the

consumption of nutrients in a village in India. If village studies reveal interesting patterns and changes,

then, given the size and diversity of India, it is imperative that we look beyond the initial established