Determining the Caloric Content of Food Consumed away from Home : An Application to the Construction of a Cost-of-Basic-Needs Poverty Line
Food purchased and consumed away from home is a growing share of household expenditure in developing countries. Therefore, measuring the monetary value and estimating the caloric equivalent of these meals are increasingly important for the accurate...
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| Language: | English |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2022
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099319404262234256/IDU0de68011902ce0040430aa930282fc3c6fafd http://hdl.handle.net/10986/37393 |
| Summary: | Food purchased and consumed away from
home is a growing share of household expenditure in
developing countries. Therefore, measuring the monetary
value and estimating the caloric equivalent of these meals
are increasingly important for the accurate calculation of a
cost-of-basic-needs poverty line. The standard approach uses
the per-calorie cost of the food consumed at home to
estimate the caloric equivalent of food purchased and
consumed away from home, but it does not include an
allowance for the overhead or profit of the food seller.
This paper retains the assumption of equal composition in
the food baskets consumed inside and outside the home and
uses data from a consumption experiment in the Marshall
Islands to estimate a “multiplier” to increase the
per-calorie cost to allow for these expenses. The
methodology generates reasonable estimates of meal-specific
and overall multipliers. Although the impact of their
application is minimal in this case, it may be larger in
contexts with higher shares of food purchased and consumed
away from home in total consumption. |
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