Household Expenditure on Food of Animal Origin: A Comparison of Uganda, Vietnam and Peru. PPLPI Working Paper No. 43
Abstract
Although poverty is a multidimensional phenomenon, it is often linked to (not) having access to adequate food and nutrition, which has repercussions on household members' health and their capacity to work. Food of animal origin, even in small amounts, plays an important role in improving the nutritional status of low income households by addressing micro and macro nutrient deficiencies. This paper investigates household consumption patterns of animal source food products, which include milk, eggs, meat and fish, and aims to corroborate theoretical expectations with empirical findings.
Three countries were selected for the study, namely Uganda, Vietnam and Peru. The paper investigates the proportion of household budget spent on livestock products and its variation across urban and rural areas, income quintiles and across countries. In the first step of the analysis the countries were analyzed individually and in a second step the findings were compared across countries and tested econometrically.
The empirical analysis confirms theoretical expectations, for example that although rural and poorer households use a larger share of their household budget for food consumption, they consistently consume smaller amounts of livestock products. For livestock products the study findings are maintained by area location, within each country and across countries while trends in fish consumption are not as clear as those for livestock products and tend to be country specific.
A 3-page executive summary is available as well as the full paper.
Citation
PPLPI, FAO, Rome, Italy, vi+30 pp.