How Do We Choose Our Identity? A Revealed Preference Approach Using Food Consumption

Are identities fungible? How do people come to identify with specific groups? This paper proposes a revealed preference approach, using food consumption to uncover ethnic and religious identity choices in India. We first show that consumption of identity goods responds to forces suggested by social identity research: group status and group salience. Moreover, identity choices respond to the cost of following the group's prescribed behaviors. We propose and estimate a demand system to quantify the identity changes that followed India's 1991 reforms. While social identity research has focused on status and salience, our results suggest that economic costs also play an important role.

Automated summary

The study uses food consumption to uncover ethnic and religious identity choices in India, finding that consumption of identity goods is influenced by group status and group salience, as well as the cost of following the group's prescribed behaviors. The research shows that economic costs also play an important role in identity choices, in addition to factors like group status and salience often focused on in social identity research.