BACKGROUND The low-income Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu is experiencing a double burden of diet-related disease whereby micronutrient deficiencies and underweight occur at the same time as obesity related non-communicable diseases. Increasing intakes of nutrient dense, energy dilute foods such as fruits and vegetables will be important to address this issue. However, reduced access to agricu...

Household economies of scale arise when households with multiple members share public goods, making larger households better o¤ at lower per capita expenditures. Research into household scale economies has not considered how household economies of scale have changed over time. I use American household expenditure surveys, covering 1888 to 1935, to produce the …rst comparable historical estimate...

BACKGROUND During the last three decades, the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) in Iran has fallen considerably; from 6.5 per woman in 1983 to 1.89 in 2010. This paper analyzes the extent to which economic determinants at the micro and macro levels are associated with the number of children in Iranian households. METHODS Household data from the 2010 Household Expenditure and Income Survey (HEIS) is ...

Objective To investigate trends in out-of-pocket health-care payments and catastrophic health expenditure in India by household age composition. Methods We obtained data from four national consumer expenditure surveys and three health-care utilization surveys conducted between 1993 and 2014. Households were divided into five groups by age composition. We defined catastrophic health expenditur...

Out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditure on health care has significant implications for poverty in many developing countries. This paper aims to assess the differential impact of OOP expenditure and its components, such as expenditure on inpatient care, outpatient care and on drugs, across different income quintiles, between developed and less developed regions in India. It also attempts to measure pov...