Education and Food Consumption Patterns: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Indonesia

TL;DR

This study uses Indonesian survey data to show that higher education levels lead to healthier food choices, highlighting the role of education in improving nutrition and reducing unhealthy food consumption in developing countries.

Contribution

It provides quasi-experimental evidence linking education levels to healthier food consumption patterns in Indonesia, using the Expected Outcome Methodology.

Findings

Higher education correlates with 31.5% more healthy food consumption.

More educated individuals consume 22.8% less unhealthy food.

Education increases inequality in healthy food consumption.

Abstract

How does food consumption improve educational outcomes is an important policy issue for developing countries. Applying the Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS) 2014, we estimate the returns of food consumption to education and investigate if more educated individuals tend to consume healthier bundles than less-educated individuals do. We implement the Expected Outcome Methodology, which is similar to Average Treatment on The Treated (ATT) conceptualized by Angrist and Pischke (2009). We find that education tends to tilt consumption towards healthier foods. Specifically, individuals with upper secondary or higher levels of education, on average, consume 31.5% more healthy foods than those with lower secondary education or lower levels of education. With respect to unhealthy food consumption, more highly-educated individuals, on average, consume 22.8% less unhealthy food than less-educated individuals. This suggests that education can increase the inequality in the consumption of healthy food bundles. Our study suggests that it is important to design policies to expand education for all for at least up to higher secondary level in the context of Indonesia. Our finding also speaks to the link between food-health gradient and human capital formation for a developing country such as Indonesia.