SOCIO-DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGES, FOOD, AND HEALTH: EVIDENCES FROM IRANIAN INCOME AND EXPENDITURE SURVEYS

Studying interplays between demographic changes, food and nutrition and their related health impact has been a very essential part of demography of food and nutrition studies at recent years. Although, early writings on the issue go back to some centuries ago, however, new changes in demography, nutrition, and health during recent decades were so overwhelming that the field introduced itself as a new and developing interdisciplinary area under the general title of ‘demography of health and nutrition’. This paper has tried to keep a demographic look at dietary and health experiences of Iranian households during 1986-2016.In past three decades investigating the interplays between population or demographic characteristics and nutrition has led to emergence of the theory called ‘Nutrition Transition’, first acknowledged by Barry M. Popkin in his outstanding article in Population and Development Review under the title of Nutritional patterns and transitions, published in the year 1993 . according to this theory changes in demography or population characteristics, changes in nutrition and changes in health which usually each is named by the concept of transition, are coincided. After three decades of writing on different aspects of the relationship, now it is evident that population transition coupled with socio-economic changes has brought many changes and challenges into food consumption and health experiences of people all around the world from developing to developed countries. In this paper, records for a pooled sample around 150000 Iranian households from nationally represented Income and Expenditure Cross-sectional Surveys are analyzed. Descriptive statistics, bivariate analysis, and multivariate analysis have been done by the use of Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS).Preliminary findings of the study are indicative of that, substantial changes have been occur in Iranian households’ demographics, food consumption and dietary experiences, and health expenditure during the study period (1986 to 2016). In the period, family size is declined dramatically; median age of household members increased substantially; and household socio-economic status (SES) has increased considerably. Taking food consumption, per-capita consumption of almost all food groups have increased remarkably including, edible oils and fat, sugar and sweeteners, and per-capita energy intake from all food stuff. Per-capita consumption of fruits has been somewhat stable (with fluctuations), however, per-capita consumption of vegetables has been rising especially in recent years. Per-capita consumption of white and red meat, instead, stayed almost stable during the study period. Recent years have been utilizing higher levels of food variety comparing to the past. Results showed a strong period effect in food and dietary experiences and health expenditures of Iranian households. Family size has a strong and negative impact on almost all food groups consumed, and in turn, household SES has been a strong predictor of higher levels of consumption of any food group. The exception is negative effect of only educational attainment of the head of the household (as part of the SES index) on edible oils/fat and sugar/sweeteners. Generally speaking, results are indicative of rapid and drastic changes in Iranian households’ demographic and socio-economic characteristics, which in turn, brought about changes and new challenges for the country’s public health management. Iran, rapidly going through her different phases of demographic transition, is following her developing counterparts in terms of nutrition transition, acquiring the diet rich in fat and sugar and high in energy intake, with their proceeding health problems and issues. With the existing trends, over nutrition, overweight, obesity, and related cardiovascular diseases and health conditions are waiting for the country in coming years. According to the findings and existed trends in the areas of demography, nutrition, and health, some policy implications are discussed

کلیدواژه ها:

Socio-Demographic Transition ، Nutrition Transition ، food and dietary experiences ، Health ، SES