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Affluence and Food: A Simple Way to Infer Incomes
Author(s) -
Clements Kenneth W.,
Chen Dongling
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
american journal of agricultural economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.949
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1467-8276
pISSN - 0002-9092
DOI - 10.1093/ajae/aaq049
Subject(s) - reciprocal , economics , measure (data warehouse) , econometrics , simple (philosophy) , engel curve , public economics , computer science , price index , philosophy , linguistics , epistemology , database
Accurate and timely measures of cross‐country real incomes are still a rarity. As the share of expenditure devoted to food is readily available, we use Engel's law in reciprocal form to measure affluence. Analysis of real income data for over 100 countries indicates that this approach is viable. To recognize the role of uncertainty in the analysis, we present the results in the form of stochastic cross‐country income comparisons.