Consumption Patterns
One study considered the opportunity costs of smoking for poor households in Bangladesh by comparing the amount of money spent on tobacco to the calories that could be “bought” with the forgone money (Ali et al. 2003). The average amounts spent on tobacco each day would generally be enough to make the difference between at least one family member having just enough to eat to keep from being malnourished (Ali et al. 2003, p. 12).
John (2008a) found that in India, households with tobacco users had lower consumption of certain commodities such as milk, education, clean fuels, and entertainment, which may have a more direct bearing on women and children in the household than on men, suggesting that tobacco spending also had negative effects on per capita nutrition intake.
Similar results are likely to apply to heavy alcohol consumption, although the evidence appears to be more qualitative than that for smoking.9 One study compared two groups of 98 families living in Delhi, India (Saxena et al. 2003). In the first group, at least one adult from each family consumed three or more drinks per week over the course of a month. In the second group, no one consumed more than one drink over a month-long period.
Families in the first group spent almost 14 times as much on alcohol each month than those in the second group, resulting in fewer financial resources available for items such as food, education, and daily consumables. In addition, 54 families in the first group were in debt, compared with 29 in the second. Benegal et al. (2000) had similar findings for the costs associated with heavy alcohol consumption.
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