Two decades after its original publication, The Analysis of Household Surveys is reissued with a new preface by its author, Sir Angus Deaton, recipient of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. This classic work remains relevant to anyone with a serious interest in using household survey data to shed light on policy issues.
Utsa Patnaik’s new critique of our work on food and nutrition is wholly unconvincing. Her analysis of international patterns of “total” cereal consumption, interesting as it may be, does not invalidate anything we wrote, and certainly does not indict us of any “fallacies”. And her attempt to demonstrate that the decline of cereal intake in India reflects “severe demand-deflation for the majority of the population” is based on a circular argument.
This paper reviews recent evidence on food intake and nutrition in India. It attempts to make sense of various puzzles, particularly the decline of average calorie intake during the last 25 years. This decline has occurred across the distribution of real per capita expenditure, in spite of increases in real income and no long-term increase in the relative price of food.
This paper reviews recent evidence on food intake and nutrition in India. It attempts to make sense of various puzzles, particularly the decline of average calorie intake during the last 25 years. This decline has occurred across the distribution of real per capita expenditure, in spite of increases in real income and no long-term increase in the relative price of food. One hypothesis is that calorie requirements have declined due to lower levels of physical activity or improvements in the health environment.
