Household commodity demand and demographics in the Netherlands: A microeconometric analysis

Adriaan Kalwij, Rob Alessie and Peter Fontein ()
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Peter Fontein: CentER for Economic Research and Economics Institute Tilburg, Tilburg University, P.O. Box 90153, 5000LE Tilburg, The Netherlands

Journal of Population Economics, 1998, vol. 11, issue 4, 577 pages

Abstract: We investigate the effects of demographics, household expenditure and female employment on the allocation of household expenditure to consumer goods. For this purpose we estimate an Almost Ideal Demand System based on Dutch micro data. We find that interactions between household expenditure and demographics are of significant importance in explaining the allocation to consumer goods. As a consequence, consumer goods such as housing and clothing change with demographic characteristics from luxuries to necessities. Furthermore, this implies that budget and price-elasticities cannot be consistently estimated from aggregated data and that equivalence scales are not identified from budget survey data alone. We reject weak separability of consumer goods from female employment. A couple with an employed spouse has a smaller budget share for housing and personal care and a larger budget share for education, recreation and transport and clothing compared to a couple with a non-employed spouse.

Keywords: Demand; systems; ·; consumption; ·; demographics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C30 D12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999-01-21
Note: Received: 12 September 1997/Accepted: 27 February 1998
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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