• Multi-disciplinary in its approach including discussion of economic, public health, food policy, psychology, and nutrition literature
• Uses longitudinal "panel" data in both developed and developing countries to analysis food policies
• Includes a discussion of the obesity epidemic

Readership: Researchers and students working in the fields of health economics, food policy, nutritional science, and psychology. NGOs and government officials charged with creating effective food policies.

Alok Bhargava, University of Houston

"Alok Bhargava can always be expected to write important papers and texts on major topics concerning how real people live (or not) and the quality of their lives using advanced arguments from economics and based on skilled use of econometric methodology. Here he tackles the vital interaction between economics with health, food consumption, and economics tangled up with questions about attitudes to poverty and gender. This is a rich and difficult field and quickly leads to questions about the objectives of a society and the various difficult choices about how best to target resources. It should be remembered that intellectual giants, such as Newton, Galileo, and Shakespeare, lived and succeeded whilst living in conditions that would now be considered as deplorable. Economics and scientific discovery can take us some way towards making rational decisions but one probably needs philosophy and sound politics to reach the best outcomes." - Clive Granger, 2003 Nobel Prize for Economics Laureate@l

"Integrating food behavior, health activities, educational investments, and demographic choices into a coherent measure of family and individual welfare is a daunting task. This volume by Alok Bhargava succeeds in doing so at three different levels. First, the empirical models and techniques are state-of-the-art, so applied econometricians will be happy. Second, the models incorporate accepted bio-physical relationships from the public health and medical communities, so biological scientists interested in health-nutrition linkages no longer feel left out from economists' analyses. And third, the food policy community now has a rigorous, empirically-based set of relationships that are amenable to public interventions. It is very good to have food policy analysis back on the research agenda in such an integrated and toughly empirical fashion." - C. Peter Timmer, Visiting Professor, Program on Food Security and Environment, Stanford University

Preface
Glossary
1: Introduction
2: Demand for food and nutrients in developing countries
3: Nutrition and child health outcomes in developing countries
4: Child health and cognitive development in developing countries
5: Fertility, child mortality, and economic development
6: Nutrition, health, and productivity in developing countries
7: Behavior, diet, and obesity in developed countries
8: Summing up and concluding remarks