Engel’s Law and Expenditure Elasticities of Specific Food Items in India: 1950-51 to 1999-2000

A R Prasad
Additional contact information
A R Prasad: Department of Economics, Faculty of Social Sciences, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi – 221 005, India

Journal of Global Economy, 2005, vol. 1, issue 4, 233-242

Abstract: Economic development involves an increase in national and per capita income and the consequent changes in the consumption pattern. A notable change in the pattern of consumption expenditure is expected due to change in per capita income. The pattern of expenditure is a good indicator of the economic status and the standard of living of the consumer and also shows the relative importance of individual items in the consumption pattern. As the economy develops, the level of income of its people increases and they begin consuming larger quantity and superior quality products. This process though quite gradual brings about changes in the pattern of consumption over time. The pattern of private final consumption expenditure on food commodity group and specific food items gives a broad idea of the change in household consumption pattern and is a direct measure of the living standard of the people. It is, therefore, desirable to analyse the pattern of consumption expenditure and the present exercise, therefore, deals with the analysis of the responsiveness of consumption expenditure on specific food items to the change in total consumption expenditure on food commodity group during 1950-51 to 1999-2000. Sign and magnitude of estimates of expenditure elasticities will prove to be useful in classifying the items of food into luxuries and necessities at a macro level.

Keywords: Economic Development; Engel’s law; per capita income; consumption; Indian economy; food articles (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E2 K0 Q2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.rcssindia.org/jge (application/pdf)
http://www.rcssindia.org/jge (text/html)
Not freely downloadable

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:jge:journl:146

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Global Economy is currently edited by Dr J K SACHDEVA

More articles in Journal of Global Economy from Research Centre for Social Sciences,Mumbai, India
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dr J K Sachdeva ().