The Demand for Nutrients in China: A Direct Approach

China is experiencing a nutrition transition which is coextensive with its rapid economic growth, and the most dramatic changes can be seen in food structure and nutritional demand. However, the relationship between income growth and changes in the demand for nutrients are still unclear. This paper uses household survey data and a direct method to estimate the income elasticities for 22 nutrients to fill the gap in the current literature. Our results show that the income elasticities of most nutrients are quite small and vary for different income groups, which implie that economic success has different influence on nutrition status for different families and the effect is not substantial.