Maternal Nutrition Knowledge and the Demand for Micronutrient-Rich Foods: Evidence from Indonesia

This study applies both parametric and non-parametric techniques to a new household data set from rural Indonesia to explain previous findings of a reduced-form relationship between nutrition knowledge and child micronutrient status. Households of mothers with and without nutrition knowledge allocate identical budget shares to food; yet, within the food budget, ‘knowledge’ households allocate substantially larger shares to micronutrient-rich foods and smaller shares to rice than do ‘non-knowledge’ households. These differences are partially attributable to differences in maternal schooling, but nutrition knowledge has additional sources (in particular, access to the village health centre/posyandu) and independent explanatory power in conditioning the demand for micronutrient-rich foods.