Abstract

The income elasticity of food expenditures versus income elasticity of calories intake controversy marked all the
literatures of the 1980 and 1990 decennaries at the subject of fight against foods insecurity.
Food insecurity phenomena are recurrent in northern Cameroon.
Public policies for ameliorating the level of nutrition of undernourished and vulnerable households consisted to
distribution cereals. Without any theoretical and empirical basis, all redistribution policies are budgetary costly
and can generate unwished or negative effects and be with limited impact.
The aim of this study is to situate the Cameroonian specificities in the income elasticity controversy and to
propose the optimal canal of transmission of policies effects. The utilization of raw data of ECAM96 in a
retrospective study place income elasticity of food expenditures at the interval [0.21, 1.54] and income elasticity
of calories intake in [0.39, 0.59] for households.
The income elasticity of food expenditures channel is optimal. The increase of real income however have to be
oriented on food prices for exclusive consumption of target households for to channel policy effects and to avoid
negative effects on social sectors (health, education).

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