A beef with growth? an empirical analysis of income and animal farming

While a number of studies examine the e↵ects of economic growth on consumption of meat and other animal-based protein, little research has been devoted to assessing the relationship between income and the number of animals that are farmed in meat, dairy and egg production. Using panel data from 155 countries during the period 1992–2013, we find that an increase in GDP per capita is associated with a rise in the per capita annual number of life years that are spent by farmed animals in agriculture as a result of animal-based protein consumption. Furthermore, we find that this relationship diminishes as GDP per capita rises and that there might even be a turning point at which the number of farmed animal life years declines with further increases in per capita income. These results are relevant for recent theoretical work aiming to extend welfare economics to include non-human animals.