| dc.description.abstract | This study analyzed aggregate food expenditure data of marginal and small farmers` families’
collected from the Dinajpur District in the north-western Bangladesh. The Linear Approximate
Almost Ideal Demand System (LA/AIDS) method is used to estimate food expenditure and
demand function for aggregating the seven food categories. In order to observe the impact of per
capita monthly food expenditure, prices of different commodities, household size, dependency
ratio, sex, age, food security status and occupation of the household head on the budget share.
The study was based on among the NGO beneficiaries program LRP-45 (ActionAid
Bangladesh), Ghorgahat and Katabari union in dinajpur District. The food demand and
expenditure behavior analysed by sample of size of 165 household was drawn from the
enumerated household of 4936 employing simple random sampling method.
The AIDS model fits better for all the items as the adjusted R2
values under consideration the
regression through-the -origin model as a solution to the problem of Heteroscedasticity.
The results revealed that, the allocation of household total monthly expenditure on food items.
The mean budget share for Cereals, Roots and Pulses, Vegetables, Rich foods, Milk & Sugar, Oil
& Spices and Drugs & Other Luxuries was (52%, 9.5%, 14.6%, 3.0%, 6.8%, 5.8%, & 7.7%)
respectively. The empirical findings of the estimated seven expenditure equations are
summarized. The expenditure elasticities for food groups are elastic, except cereals, vegetables,
and oil & spices. The implication is that food groups of cereals, vegetables, and spices are
necessities in the Bangladeshi diet. Roots & pulses, rich foods, milk & sugar, and luxuries foods
are luxury goods. Marshallian and Hicksian elasticity calculated from the model were between 1
and -1 making the products less responsive to price changes. The uncompensated own-price
elasticties for the food items for cereals (-0.43), vegetables (-1.07), milk & sugar (-0.67), oil & spices (0.83) and luxuries (-1.04) were inelastic, showing that consumers were not sensitive to
the price in adjusting their consumption of corresponding items. However, for vegetables, roots
& pulses, own-price elasticity of demand were close to one (0.68) implying that quantity
demanded for this item changes by almost the same percentage with the price change. That is, if
the prices of these food items decreased, then the demand for those food increased. For example,
if price of rich foods falls by 10 percent, then demand for rich foods would increase by 19.6
percent. Compensated own and cross-price elasriceties of demand for oil & spices, and rich
foods in this case were substitutes. | en_US |
