How Do We Choose Our Identity? A Revealed Preference Approach Using Food Consumption

Are identities fungible? How do people come to identify with specific groups? This paper proposes a revealed preference approach, using food consumption to uncover identity choices. We focus on ethnic and religious identities in India. We first show that consumption of identity goods (e.g. beef and pork) responds systematically to forces suggested by social identity research: group status and group salience, with the latter proxied by Hindu-Muslim violence. Moreover, identity choices respond to the market cost of following the group's prescribed behaviors. We propose and estimate an appropriately modified demand system. Using these estimates, we quantify the identity changes that followed India's1991economic reforms, and estimate the relative importance of the forces above in shaping identities. While conflict and status have been at the focus of social identity research in recent decades, our results indicate that costs play a dominant role.