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PurposeWhile the monetary returns to education are well documented in the economics literature, the studies on non-monetary returns to education are scarce. The purpose of this study is to provide new insights into the non-market outcomes by exploring how education influences the food consumption choices of households and how these effects vary across different socio-economic groups using household-level calorie consumption data from Sri Lanka.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses two waves of Household Income and Expenditure Surveys – 2006/2007 and 2016. The methods adopted in analysing the data were descriptive statistics and the OLS regression model.FindingsThe empirical results show that educated poor households pay less per calorie compared to non-educated poor households, highlighting the role of education in improving the ability to make better food choices and manage household budgets more economically.Practical implicationsThis study informs policy-makers of the importance of education for formulating food and nutritional policies, which aim to raise the standard of living of resource-poor and vulnerable households in Sri Lanka as well as other developing countries with similar socio-economic conditions.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first to explore the impact of education on the calorie consumption behaviour of people in the Sri Lankan context using nationwide household surveys.Peer reviewThe peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-01-2022-0007

Urban agriculture (UA) is proposed as a solution to the social and economic challenges presented by cities by providing urban households with food and income using environmentally friendly food production techniques. To date, most analysis of UA has been based on single-city studies. This paper aims to contribute to the literature by using a cross-country approach and by analysing household level data from nine sub-Saharan countries—Burkina Faso (2014), Ethiopia (2013), Ghana (2009), Malawi (2013), Niger 2014, Nigeria (2012), Tanzania (2010) and Uganda (2013). This paper sets out to answer three questions; the first investigates which are the main characteristics of households engaged in urban agriculture; the second looks at the role played by UA in diversifying household diets and reducing household food expenditure; the third examines the heterogeneity in the impact of UA across the food expenditure distribution. Using an inverse-probability weighted regression adjustment method, the results show that households engaged in agriculture reduced expenditure on food and modified their food expenditure profile by spending more on protein rich food -nuts, legumes, fruits, dairy products, meat and poultry. The study also finds substantial variation on the impact of UA across the food expenditure distribution.

Arid developing countries face growing challenges from water scarcity, which are exacerbated by deficient piped water supply infrastructures. Increasing block tariffs (IBTs), charging higher rates with increasing water consumption, can potentially reconcile cost recovery to finance these infrastructures with an equitable and affordable sharing of the cost burden. A firm understanding of the impacts of varying prices and socio-economic conditions on residential water demand is necessary for designing IBTs that promote these objectives. Consistently estimating water demand under an IBT requires a discrete/continuous choice (DCC) model. Despite this, few econometric studies of arid developing countries have applied this state-of-the-art approach. This paper applies a DCC model to estimate residential water demand under IBTs in the severely water-stressed country of Jordan, using 15,811 country-wide household-level observations from five years up to 2013. We extend Hewitt and Hanemann’s original DCC formulation in order to accommodate IBTs featuring a linearly progressive tariff block. We then use the resulting demand function to assess Jordan’s 2013 IBTs and alternative IBT designs. Under the estimated price elasticities, very few IBT designs achieve a full recovery of the financial costs of water provision, but we still identify a potential to improve cost recovery and affordability.

Conflict and political instability have weakened Guinea-Bissau's productive infrastructure considerably during the past three decades. This situation contributes to an increase in the degree of vulnerability of the population, especially in rural areas where most economic activities continue to take place. As growth has been weak, poverty levels remain high. This book provides a collection of papers on conflict, livelihoods, and poverty in Guinea-Bissau based on both the nationally representative 2002 household survey and a small scale survey with both quantitative and qualitative components implemented in 2004. The chapters deal with growth and poverty, institutions and social networks, the determinants of poverty, the means of livelihoods of the population, and finally cashew production and taxation.

Heterogeneity is a defining characteristic of environmental demand studies that use household-level data. People make different choices due to observed and unobserved differences in preferences and constraints, choice elements are quality-differentiated commodities that can be consumed in different ways, and observed characteristics of people are often import for policy. In this review I examine how environmental economists have responded to the challenges and opportunities this heterogeneity implies. I categorize the types of heterogeneity that can be present, provide examples of each, and propose criteria to use in deciding when explicit attention should be paid to the different types. I then show how a variety of economic and econometric models have been used to accommodate the various dimensions of observed and unobserved heterogeneity, and I discuss opportunities for further research on the topic.

Marketing researchers have long used brand switching analyses and Markov transition matrices to gain insights into managerial problems. Almost without exception, this work makes (inappropriate) inferences about individual consumers by analyzing household-level data. This paper presents a procedure based on the distribution of run lengths in household level panel data that allows more insights into the choice behavior of the individuals in the household. We test these procedures in a large simulation study by attempting to recover the underlying (known) structure of the process generating a string of panel data. Finally, we use the procedure to classify the purchase behavior, with respect to powdered soft drinks, of a set of households in a panel. Our results show that marketing scientists have the potential to learn and test more hypotheses about the individuals in a household by examining the distribution of run lengths.

Equality of opportunity is about leveling the playing field so that circumstances such as gender, ethnicity, place of birth, or family background do not influence a person's life chances. Success in life should depend on people's choices, effort and talents, not to their circumstances at birth. 'Measuring Inequality of Opportunities in Latin America and the Caribbean' introduces new methods for measuring inequality of opportunities and makes an assessment of its evolution in Latin America over a decade. An innovative Human Opportunity Index and other parametric and non-parametric techniques are presented for quantifying inequality based on circumstances exogenous to individual efforts. These methods are applied to gauge inequality of opportunities in access to basic services for children, learning achievement for youth, and income and consumption for adults.

We examine the link between wage and consumption inequality using a life-cycle model incorporating consumption and family labor supply decisions. We derive analytical expressions for the dynamics of consumption, hours, and earnings of two earners in the presence of correlated wage shocks, nonseparability, progressive taxation, and asset accumulation. The model is estimated using panel data for hours, earnings, assets, and consumption. We focus on family labor supply as an insurance mechanism and find strong evidence of smoothing of permanent wage shocks. Once family labor supply, assets, and taxes are properly accounted for there is little evidence of additional insurance.

In this article, we analyse the dynamics of intra-household allocations using unique panel data on individual-specific consumption expenditures and time used for leisure, market production, and home production. Cross-sectional differences at the time of marriage in expected wage profiles between a husband and wife strongly affect the allocation of private consumption expenditures and time use by households in the cross section. There are substantial gender asymmetries in these allocations. Even for households where the husband and wife have identical wages, the private consumption expenditures for the wife are about half those for the husband. Within a given household over time, shocks to wages lead households to shift the relative weights in favour of the spouse receiving the favourable shock. Additionally, we find that households adjust the weights in response to large but not to small shocks; the adjustment to the weights is twice as large in the year leading up to a divorce; and adjustments are more frequent in dual- than in single-earner households. We interpret the data using a dynamic collective model of the household with potentially limited commitment.