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Household Consumption Patterns in Pakistan: An Urban-Rural Comparison Using Micro Data
Author(s) -
Nadeem A. Burney,
Ashfaque H. Khan
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
pakistan development review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.154
H-Index - 26
ISSN - 0030-9729
DOI - 10.30541/v30i2pp.145-171
Subject(s) - commodity , economics , consumption (sociology) , engel curve , sample (material) , scale (ratio) , household income , econometrics , demographic economics , price index , geography , social science , chemistry , cartography , archaeology , chromatography , sociology , market economy
This paper examines the household consumption patternsseparately for the urban and the rural sectors in Pakistan by estimatingthe marginal expenditure shares and expenditure elasticities, for twelvebroad commodity groups, using household level data for the year 1984-85.At the sectoral level, the marginal expenditure shares are estimatedboth with and without the 'community effect'. Furthermore, by dividinghouseholds within each sector into different income groups,income-specific marginal expenditure shares and elasticities are alsoobtained. This level of disaggregation reveals much richer consumptionpatterns as compared to the ones based on grouped data. The estimatedmarginal expenditure shares indicate that in examining the householdconsumption pattems one can safely assume that all the households in thesample face the same price structure. While the fmdings of the papersupport the validity of Engel's Law, the estimates presented indicatethat expenditure elasticities for different commodity groups vary withincome and, in general, exhibit a cyclical pattern, which is explainedin terms of quantitative as well as qualitative changes in thehouseholds' consumption basket. For a majority of the commodity groups,both structural and behavioural differences in the consumption patternsare found to exist between the urban and the rural households.Furthermore, our results also confirm the existence of economies ofscale in the consumption of majority of the commodity groups. Thedegrees of these economies of scale are not only different acrosscommodities but also between sectors and across the income groups withineach sector.

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