Variations in family budget shares by net family income

Section 5 provided tables showing average food expenditures classified by levels of net family income and each of a number of household characteristics considered in turn. This Section gives the results of a multivariate analysis of the food expenditure data in which net family income and all the household characteristics appear simultaneously. Household characteristics are correlated with one another (for example Income Support or Family Credit receipt is more common in some household composition types than in others). This analysis gives a view of the independent effects of income and each of the household characteristics

Demand properties in household Nash equilibrium

We study noncooperative household models with two agents and several voluntarily contributed public goods, deriving the counterpart to the Slutsky matrix and demonstrating the nature of the deviation of its properties from those of a true Slutsky matrix in the unitary model. We demonstrate the importance of distinguishing between cases in which there are and are not jointly contributed public goods and provide results characterising both cases. Demand properties are contrasted with those for collective models and conclusions drawn regarding the possibility of empirically testing the collective model against noncooperative alternatives

On the identification of the effect of smoking on mortality

This paper considers the identification of the effect of tobacco on mortality. If individuals select into smoking according to some unobserved health characteristic, then estimates of the effect of tobacco on health that do not account for this are biased. We show that using information on mortality, morbidity and smoking, it is possible to control for this selection effect and obtain consistent estimates of the effect of smoking on mortality. We implement our method on Swedish data. We show that there is selection into smoking, and considerable dispersion around the average effect, so that health policies that aim at decreasing smoking prevalence and quantities smoked might have less effect in terms of average number of years of life gained than previously estimated. We also empirically show that selection into smoking has increased over the last fifty years with the availability of information on the dangers of smoking, so that future studies comparing smokers and non smokers will spuriously reveal a worsening effect of tobacco on health if they fail to control for selection.Health, Duration, Smoking, Selection, Mortality, Life Expectancy, Causality.

Noncooperative household demand

We study noncooperative household models with two agents and several voluntarily contributed public goods, deriving the counterpart to the Slutsky matrix and demonstrating the nature of the deviation of its properties from those of a true Slutsky matrix in the unitary model. We provide results characterising both cases in which there are and are not jointly contributed public goods. Demand properties are contrasted with those for collective models and conclusions drawn regarding the possibility of empirically testing the collective model against noncooperative alternatives and the noncooperative model against a general alternative. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Conditional cash transfers, women and the demand for food

We examine the effect of large cash transfers on the consumption of food by poor households in rural Mexico. The transfers represent 20% of household income on average, and yet, the budget share of food is unchanged following receipt of this money. This is an important puzzle to solve, particularly so in the context of a social welfare programme designed in part to improve nutrition of individuals in the poorest households. We estimate an Engel curve for food. We rule out price increases, changes in the quality of food consumed and homotheticity of preferences as explanations for this puzzle. We also show that food is a necessity, with a strong negative effect of income on the food budget share. The decrease in food budget share caused by the large increase in income is cancelled by some other relevant aspect of the programme so that the net effect is nil. We argue that the program has not changed preferences and that there is no labelling of money. We propose that the key to the puzzle resides in the fact that the transfer is put in the hands of women and that the change in control over household resources is what leads to the observed changes in behaviour.Demand, conditional cash transfer, Engel curves, income elasticities, QUAIDS, food, nutrition.

Household Nash equilibrium with voluntarily contributed public goods

We study noncooperative models with two agents and several voluntarily contributed public goods. We focus on interior equilibria in which neither agent is bound by non negativity constraints, establishing the conditions for existence and uniqueness of the equilibrium. While adding-up and homogeneity hold, negativity and symmetry properties are generally violated. We derive the counterpart to the Slutsky matrix, and show that it can be decomposed into the sum of a symmetric and negative semidefinite matrix and another the rank of which never exceeds the number of public goods plus one. Under separability of the public goods the deviation from symmetry is at most rank two.Nash equilibrium, Intra-household allocation, Slutsky

Non cooperative household demand

We study noncooperative household models with two agents and several voluntarily contributed public goods, deriving the counterpart to the Slutsky matrix and demonstrating the nature of the deviation of its properties from those of a true Slutsky matrix in the unitary model. We provide results characterising both cases in which there are and are not jointly contributed public goods. Demand properties are contrasted with those for collective models and conclusions drawn regarding the possibility of empirically testing the collective model against noncooperative alternatives and the noncooperative model against a general alternative.Nash equilibrium, Intra-household allocation, Slutsky symmetry.

Health Selection and the Effect of Smoking on Mortality

We show that individuals who are in poorer health, independently from smoking, are more likely to start smoking and to smoke more cigarettes than those with better non-smoking health. We present evidence of selection, relying on extensive data on morbidity and mortality. We show that health based selection into smoking has increased over the last fifty years with knowledge of its health effects. We show that the effect of smoking on mortality is higher for high educated individuals and for individuals in good non-smoking health.life expectancy, tobacco, confounding

Demand properties in household Nash equilibrium

Please Note: This paper was updated in July 2007 We study noncooperative household models with two agents and several voluntarily contributed public goods, deriving the counterpart to the Slutsky matrix and demonstrating the nature of the deviation of its properties from those of a true Slutsky matrix in the unitary model. We demonstrate the importance of distinguishing between cases in which there are and are not jointly contributed public goods and provide results characterising both cases. Demand properties are contrasted with those for collective models and conclusions drawn regarding the possibility of empirically testing the collective model against noncooperative alternatives.