Methodologies for assessing the household food availability in the context of food (in)security: a systematic review

Share of food group expenditure in Mexican households according to the gender of the head of household and size of the locality

OBJECTIVE

To evaluate differences in the percentage of expenditure on food groups in Mexican households according to the gender of the household head and the size of the locality.

DESIGN

Analysis of secondary data from the National Household Income and Expenditure Survey (ENIGH) 2018. We estimated the percentage of expenditure on fifteen food groups according to the gender of the head of household and locality size and evaluated the differences using a two-part model approach.

SETTING

Mexico, 2018.

PARTICIPANTS

A nationally representative sample of 74 647 Mexican households.

RESULTS

Female-headed households allocated a lower share of expenditure to the purchase of sweetened beverages and alcoholic beverages and higher percentages to milk and dairy, fruits and water. In comparison with metropolitan households, households in rural and urban localities spent more on cereals and tubers, sugar and honey, oil and fat and less on food away from home.

CONCLUSIONS

Households allocate different percentages of expenditure to diverse food groups according to the gender of the head of the household and the size of the locality where they are located. Future research should focus on understanding the economic and social disparities related to differences in food expenditure, including the gender perspective.

Using Household Expenditure Surveys for Comparable and Replicable Nutritional Analysis: Evidence from México

In this study, we explore how to use household expenditures and income surveys (HEIS) to provide replicable and comparable measures of nutrients availability at the population level. Our method formalizes the common practice in the literature and consists of three steps: identification of relevant food categories, pairing of food contents food groups in HEIS data, and calculation of the typical amount of nutrients by food group. We illustrate the usage of the method with Mexican data and provide a publicly available data set to readily convert food purchases into six nutrients: calories, proteins, vitamins A and C, iron, and zinc. We perform a descriptive analysis of the evolution of nutrients intake among Mexican households between 2008 and 2020, considering differences by income level. Our results reflect the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on nutrient availability in Mexican households, mainly driven by a substantial reduction in the expenditure in food consumed away from home, although for most nutrients the trend was stable over most of the period.