Decomposition of changes in the consumption of macronutrients in Vietnam between 2004 and 2014

Résumé

Vietnam is undergoing a nutritional transition like many middle-income countries. This paper proposes to highlight the socio-demographic drivers of this transition over the period 2004-2014. We implement a method of decomposition of between-year differences in economic outcomes recently proposed in the literature. This method allows decomposing the composition effect on the distribution of the outcome under study, which is due to the differences in covariates across years, into direct contributions of each covariate and effects of their interactions. This method is applied to VHLSS data. The results show the importance of between-year changes in the distributions of covariates on between-year changes in the distributions of total calorie intake and calorie intakes from proteins and fat. This effect is more contrasted in case of calorie intake from carbohydrates. Food expenditure and household size appear to be the main drivers of the observed evolutions in macronutrients consumption. On the contrary, the urbanization of the population has a negative effect on these evolutions, except on fat consumption. The effect of urbanization is, nevertheless, less important than the positive effects of the previous two variables.

Mots-clés

Macronutrient consumption; Nutritional transition; Decomposition method; Copulas; Vietnam;

Codes JEL

C02: Mathematical Methods
C21: Cross-Sectional Models • Spatial Models • Treatment Effect Models • Quantile Regressions
C51: Model Construction and Estimation
P46: Consumer Economics • Health • Education and Training • Welfare, Income, Wealth, and Poverty