Households across all income quintiles, especially the poorest, increased animal source food expenditures substantially during recent Peruvian economic growth.
BACKGROUND
Relative to plant-based foods, animal source foods (ASFs) are richer in accessible protein, iron, zinc, calcium, vitamin B-12 and other nutrients. Because of their nutritional value, particularly for childhood growth and nutrition, it is important to identify factors influencing ASF consumption, especially for poorer households that generally consume less ASFs.


OBJECTIVE
To estimate differential responsiveness of ASF consumption to changes in total household expenditures for households with different expenditures in a middle-income country with substantial recent income increases.


METHODS
The Peruvian Young Lives household panel (n = 1750) from 2002, 2006 and 2009 was used to characterize patterns of ASF expenditures. Multivariate models with controls for unobserved household fixed effects and common secular trends were used to examine nonlinear relationships between changes in household expenditures and in ASF expenditures.


RESULTS
Households with lower total expenditures dedicated greater percentages of expenditures to food (58.4% vs.17.9% in 2002 and 24.2% vs. 21.5% in 2009 for lowest and highest quintiles respectively) and lower percentages of food expenditures to ASF (22.8% vs. 33.9% in 2002 and 30.3% vs. 37.6% in 2009 for lowest and highest quintiles respectively). Average percentages of overall expenditures spent on food dropped from 47% to 23.2% between 2002 and 2009. Households in the lowest quintiles of expenditures showed greater increases in ASF expenditures relative to total consumption than households in the highest quintiles. Among ASF components, meat and poultry expenditures increased more than proportionately for households in the lowest quintiles, and eggs and fish expenditures increased less than proportionately for all households.


CONCLUSIONS
Increases in household expenditures were associated with substantial increases in consumption of ASFs for households, particularly households with lower total expenditures. Increases in ASF expenditures for all but the top quintile of households were proportionately greater than increases in total food expenditures, and proportionately less than overall expenditures.
Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Disease, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America.
Debbie L
DL
Humphries
Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America.
Jere R
JR
Behrman
Department of Health Science, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, United States of America.
Benjamin T
BT
Crookston
Department of Global Health, Boston University School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America.
Kirk A
KA
Dearden
Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America.
Whitney
W
Schott
Instituto de Investigación Nutricional, Lima, Peru.
Mary E
ME
Penny
D000818:Animals; D057217:Economic Development; D005191:Family Characteristics; D005502:Food / Q000191:economics*; D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D007182:Income; D010568:Peru / Q000453:epidemiology; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors