Income and Calorie Intake among Farming Households in Rural Nigeria: Results of Parametric and Nonparametric Analysis

Abstract

There has been an intense debate in the last two decades on the nature of the relationship between income andcalorie intake. This paper relooks at the relationship using parametric and nonparametric techniques. The paperemployed a survey data set collected from farm households in rural Nigeria. Our analysis indicates that averageper capita daily calorie intake in the study area is 2428 kilocalories, which is below the recommended intakelevel. We find that income has a significant positive relationship with calorie intake. Nonetheless, thecalorie-income elasticity is estimated as 0.181, suggesting that calorie intake does not increase substantially withincreases in income. The results also reveal a positive and significant relationship between farm size and calorieintake. A combination of policy strategies, including income growth, agricultural development and targeted foodprogrammes could reduce the problems of inadequate calorie consumption among poor households.