We use Oportunidades, a conditional cash transfer to women, to show that standard demand models do not represent the sample's behavior: Oportunidades increases eligible households' food budget shares, despite food being a necessity; demand for food and high-protein food changes over time only in treatment areas; the treatment effects on food and high-protein food consumption are larger than the prediction from the Engel curves at baseline; and the curves do not change in eligible households with high baseline bargaining power for the transfer recipient. Thus, handing transfers to women is a likely determinant of the observed nutritional changes.
Authors
CPP Co-Director
Orazio is an International Research Fellow at the IFS, a Professor at Yale and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
University of Arizona
Journal article details
- Publisher
- American Economic Association
- Issue
- February 2013
Suggested citation
Angelucci, M and Attanasio, O. (2013). 'The Demand for Food of Poor Urban Mexican Households: Understanding Policy Impacts Using Structural Models' (2013)
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