Household expenditure patterns in Kuwait

Abstract

Household expenditure is the second prominent component of GDP for Kuwait, consisting of 43% GDP, and it has been moderately growing for the past decade. It is essential to understand the nature of household expenditure, a fundamental macroeconomic driver with immense significance for policymaking. This paper utilises the latest Kuwait Household Expenditure Survey data to study household expenditure patterns in Kuwait. It examines and compares the variation of household expenditure patterns for nationals (Kuwaitis) and expatriate households over nine different major commodity groups. The paper investigates the patterns of household expenditure and the response of their characteristics on the level of expenditure by employing Heckman two-step estimation method. The results suggest that different factors affect the probability of consuming a commodity and the level of expenditure between the two household groups. Kuwaiti’s expenditure is more responsive to food, housing, communication and recreation commodities and less responsive to clothing, health, transportation and restaurants than expatriates. In general, there is a significant variation of expenditure patterns across all commodities between the two household groups.

Living Style and Cost of Living: A Cross-Section Analysis of B40 Households in Malaysia

“…Refer to Table 8, on average income has significantly affect food, housing, and transportation expenditure in each state. This finding is consistent with income elasticity analysis conducted by Alali et al (2020), Manajit et al (2020), andDuasa (2010a) where income significantly affects household expenditure.…”

Drivers of managers’ affect (emotions) and corporate website usage: a comparative analysis between a developed and developing country

“…To test the relationships among key constructs, data for this study were collected from managers from the USA and Kuwait. The US and Kuwaiti populations were selected for comparison for the following four reasons: The USA is a developed economy, whereas Kuwait is a fast-emerging economy in the Middle East (Alalo et al , 2020; Thakur and AlSaleh, 2018), and research comparing a developed and fast-emerging market appears limited. The two diverse countries are culturally distinct (the USA is an individualistic society and Kuwait is a collectivistic society), which may affect operation of business systems and usage of the corporate website for the transaction of goods and services (Gadelrab et al , 2020; Thakur and AlSaleh, 2018); hence, managerial perceptions of usage of corporate sites is presumed to differ. The vast majority of B2B and B2C transactions of goods and services in these countries occurs on the Internet–an eMarketers (2016) report indicates that by 2020, B2B ecommerce sales in the USA will surpass $1.1tn, whereas the B2B ecommerce market in Kuwait was $1.06bn in 2016 and is anticipated to double in the next five years (eShopWorld, 2018), suggesting that corporations in Kuwait are still in the early stage of effective usage of corporate websites for B2B ecommerce sales. Kuwait has an open market economy with no restrictions on imports or capital transfer, which makes it an attractive trading option for companies from developed countries (World Bank, 2020; Scottish Enterprise, 2018), yet an insignificant amount of research has explored factors influencing Kuwaiti managers’ corporate Web usage. Hence, a comparative study of the corporate Web usage between a developed and a developing economy is imperative. …”

“…The USA is a developed economy, whereas Kuwait is a fast-emerging economy in the Middle East (Alalo et al , 2020; Thakur and AlSaleh, 2018), and research comparing a developed and fast-emerging market appears limited.…”