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

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