Economies of Scale, Household Size, and the Demand for Food

Dados Bibliográficos

ID10172034
AutoresAngus Deaton (0000-0002-9222-8023, Princeton University), Christina Paxson (Princeton University)
Ano1998
Volume106
Fascículo5
Páginas897-930
Data de publicação1998-10-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of Political Economy (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0022-3808 • E-ISSN: 1537-534X
EditoraUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/250035
OpenAlexW1968244192
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas122
Referências citadas4

Household scale economics are plausibly attributed to shared household public goods that make larger households better off at the same level of per capita resources. larger households should therefore have higher per capita consumption of private goods, such as food, provided that they do not substitute too much toward the effectively cheaper public goods. The evidence shows exactly the opposite. Data from rich and poor countries indicate that, at constant per capita total expenditure, the per capita demand for food decreases with household size and that it does so most in the poorest countries, where substitution should be the least

Agricultural economics · Consumption (sociology · Economics · Economies of scale · Geography · Microeconomics · Per capita · Population · Private good · Public good · Scale (ratio · Economics of Agriculture and Food Markets · Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth · Income, Poverty, and Inequality