A Decomposition of the Changes in Household Food Expenditure

Sungyong Kim

Journal of Rural Development/Nongchon-Gyeongje, 2017, vol. 40, issue 4

Abstract: Focusing on the changes in the demographic spectrum of Korean society in recent years, this paper decomposes the changes in Korean households' food expenditures into various socio-demographic factors and examines how much each explanatory factor accounts for changes in the expenditures by food items. The changes in the food expenditures were evaluated by two measures: average expenditures and expenditure inequality. The demographic factors include the age of household head, the shares of single-person households and households with two or more persons, household income, the share of dual income households, and the share of female households. According to the estimation results, the socio-demographic effects as well as preference effects were found to significantly influence the changes in the average food expenditures between 2006 and 2015. Also, it was found that the factors mostly contributing to rising food expenditure inequality were the increase in the age of the household heads and the decrease in the share of the households with two or more persons. These findings imply that it is necessary to establish a public food assistance system for nutritionally vulnerable groups such as elderly households and low income households.

Keywords: Consumer/Household; Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:jordng:330734

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.330734

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