You Are What (and Where) You Eat : Capturing Food Away from Home in Welfare Measures

Farfan, Gabriela ; Genoni, Maria Eugenia ; Vakis, Renos

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: REGIONAL POVERTY LINES;    LIVING STANDARDS;    POVERTY POVERTY;    FOOD NEEDS;    HOUSEHOLD SIZE;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-7257
RP-ID  :  WPS7257

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Consumption of food away from home israpidly growing across the developing world. Surprisingly,the majority of household surveys around the world haven notkept up with its pace and still collect limited informationon it. The implications for poverty and inequalitymeasurement are far from clear, and the direction of theimpact cannot be established a priori, since consumption offood away from home affects both food consumption and thepoverty line. This paper exploits rich data on food awayfrom home collected as part of the National Household Surveyin Peru, shedding light to the extent to which welfaremeasures differ depending on whether they properly accountfor food away from home. Peru is a relevant context, withthe average Peruvian household spending 28 percent of theirfood budget on food away from home by 2010. The analysisindicates that failure to account for the consumption offood away from home has important implications for povertyand inequality measures as well as the understanding of whothe poor are. First, accounting for food away from homeresults in extreme poverty rates that are 18 percent higherand moderate poverty rates that are 16 percent lower. Theseresults are also consistent, in fact more pronounced, withpoverty gap and severity measures. Second, consumptioninequality measured by the Gini coefficient decreases by 1.3points when food away from home is included, a significantreduction. Finally, inclusion of food away from home resultsin a reclassification of households from poor to non-poorstatus and vice versa: 20 percent of the poor are differentwhen the analysis includes consumption of food away fromhome. This effect is large enough that a standard povertyprofile analysis results in significant differences betweenthe poverty classification based on whether food away fromhome is included or not. The differences cover manydimensions, including demographics, education, and labormarket characteristics. Taken together, the results indicatethat a serious rethinking of how to deal with theconsumption of food away from home in measuring well-beingis urgently needed to properly estimate and understandpoverty around the world.