Calorie Elasticities with Income Dynamics: Evidence from the Literature

This paper proposes a finite mixture model to identify the behavioral transition of calorie consumption with an assumption that nutrition consumption is a mixture of behaviors in two different stages: a poor stage and an affluent stage. Based on a meta-analysis of 387 calorie-income elasticities collected from 90 primary studies, it is found that the threshold income for calorie demand transition is $460 in 2012 prices. This implies that the transitional threshold for calorie consumption is $1.26/day, which is slightly lower than the World Bank's poverty line ($1.25/day in 2005 purchasing power parity prices) after deflation. This study provides a new empirical approach to evaluate the transition of calorie consumption and poverty line.