Food Demand Patterns in Tanzania: A Censored Regression Analysis of Microdata

Abstract

This paper estimates price and food expenditure elasticities of demand for twelve food groups in Tanzania by applying the linearized Almost Ideal Demand system to the latest household survey data. In estimation, particular attention is paid to the presence of zero expenditure and the effects of demographic characteristics on food demand patterns. The results indicate that maize, rice, other cereals, pulses, sugar, edible oils, fish, starch, fruits and vegetables, meat, and other foods are price inelastic while milk and dairy products have unitary elasticity of demand. Most of the food groups are income elastic. The results also reveal that household income and family size have significant effects on food demand patterns. Main policy implications of the results include inter alia (a) income oriented policies will have a greater effect on promoting food consumption than price related policies, (2) a significant price decline associated with increased production of maize and rice will benefit a majority of households since the two commodities have high budget shares and low own-price elasticities of demand, and (3) meat was found to be inelastic with respect to the expenditure on food.

Food prices, tax reforms and consumer Welfare in Tanzania 1991–2007

“…6 The largest household food budget share, falling from 37 per cent to 34 per cent between 1991/92 and 2007, is for cereals (grains, flour, bread, confectionary and other cereals). This compares well with other studies in Tanzania that have looked at household demand for food (Sarris and Tinios 1995;Weliwita et al 2003;Awudu and Dominique 2005) showing that cereals are the basic staple food for most households. Other important commodity groups that account for large shares of household food budgets are starch, roots and tubers (12%); meat (over 10%); vegetables (8.5%) and fish (8%).…”

Structure and properties of urban household food demand in Nairobi, Kenya: implications for urban food security

“…Data limitations mean that only a few household characteristics are analysed. Recent studies which have assessed the effects of demographic characteristics on demand include those of Weliwita et al (2003) in Tanzania and Abdulai et al (1999) in India. Teklu (1996) provided several hypotheses as to why demographic characteristics are important.…”

“…Actual market prices 8 were collected in the survey and used in the estimation. Category prices were calculated by summing the prices of the items in a category and were weighted by the category budget share (Abdulai et al 1999;Weliwita et al 2003). This departs from unit values (total food item expenditure divided by total quantity) used in many studies and avoids computation of elasticities for individual food items that form insignificant budget shares.…”

Demand for Meat in the Rural and Urban Areas of Kenya: A Focus on the Indigenous Chicken

“…Therefore, they are useful in providing essential animal source proteins for the rural and urban consumers in Kenya. In regard to other studies, chicken, beef and mutton were classified as necessities in Bangladesh [52], while only beef in Tanzania [53]. However, beef and the aggregated poultry category were identified as luxuries in urban areas [28], including the aggregated meat category and fish in Cameroon [54] and Tanzania [34].…”