Decomposition of Socioeconomic Changes in the Consumption of Micronutrients in Pakistan between 2006 and 2016

ABSTRACT This study is conducted to decompose inequality in four important micronutrient intakes, i.e. calcium, iodine, iron, and zinc due to socioeconomic factors during 2006–2016. For this purpose, data were taken from national-level surveys, i.e. HIES-2006 and HIICS-2016. We applied a recently proposed decomposition method based on copula function to decompose between year changes in the consumption of micronutrients into structure and composition effect. The results show that average calcium and iron intakes increased by 518.54 (mg) and 0.962 (mg), respectively, while average iodine and zinc intakes decreased by 2.009 (mg) and 3.411 (mg), respectively, during the decade. Estimates of structure effect show that calcium, iodine, and iron consumption increased on average, i.e. 525.316 (mg), 14.615 (mg), and 2.15 (mg), respectively, while zinc intake decreased by 2.735 (mg). The composition effect is negative for all the four micronutrients, implying that consumption of calcium, iodine, iron, and zinc decreased as 6.7766 (mg), 16.624 (mg), 1.189 (mg), and 0.677 (mg), respectively. The main factors of this change are household income, urbanization, provinces, and household size. The policymakers need to know the importance of socioeconomic factors to improve hidden hunger in terms of micronutrient intakes.