رفتار مصرف كنندگان شهري و روستايي ايران : مطالعه موردي كالاهاي اساسي مشمول يارانه

Rural and urban consumersʹ behaviour in Iran:The case study of subsidized stable food

Stable food is of subsidized commodities that is mainly distributed in order to protect the low-income groups. High importance of this commodity in consumersʹ basket is the main reason of recognizing consumption pattern. In order to study the consumersʹ behavior and to estimate elasticities of commodities, Deaton (1988) approach was applied. The used data set also contains the expenditure and physical amount of the above commodities and demographic characteristics, including family size and education level of family head. This data was obtained through rural and urban families from Khorasan, Mazandaran, East Azerbaijan, Hormozgan, and Charmahal and Bakhtiary provinces, participated in annual household survey of 2001. The results indicate that selected commodities are consumed as a complementary set. Consumers, also response to rice price increment strongly rather than the other commodities. Comparing the urban and rural consumption patterns also show that rice is more important in urban region than in rural. In the case of bread a reverse order is observed.The income elasticity coefficients also revealed a high tendency of rural consumers to increase the amount of consumption compared to urban consumers. Comparing the quality elasticities coefficients of rural and urban consumers indicate a high sensitivity of rural consumers rather than urban to changes in selected commodities quality.