The Effect of Economic Crises on Nutritional Status: Evidence from Russia

The Effect of Economic Crises on Nutritional Status: Evidence from Russia This paper uses data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) to examine the effect of unanticipated fluctuations in income on nutrient intake and nutritional status. Russian households have experienced large reductions in income and expenditure during the transition period, with a particularly severe decline occurring in the fall of 1998. Anecdotal evidence has suggested that the quality of health care available in Russia has declined precipitously, and that the average Russian faces a reduced lifespan and a lower quality of life. We evaluate four measures of nutrition -energy intake, two dimensions of diet quality, and BMI which is a measure of net energy intake. We find that there is a clear positive effect of longerrun resources on energy intake, diet composition, and on BMI. In contrast to the large decline in food expenditure, food quantities appear to be very resilient to variation in income and this is reflected in both energy intakes and BMI, which both change very little as income deviates from its long-run average. This is true for adults, as well as for typically vulnerable groups such as young women and the elderly. Diet composition, however, does change in response to transitory income variation. It appears that individuals and households are able to weather large income shocks at least in terms of maintaining body mass and energy intake.