The Effects of Social Characteristics of Iranian Households on Food Consumption Expenditures

By using the household data on food consumption, income and other social indicators including activity status, age, literacy, place of residence employment, and marital status, this paper aims to investigate the transitory impact of temporary and permanent income shocks on food consumption in Iran over the period 2009-2014. To study the deterministic effects of the household on food consumption and income, firstly, an Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) method is used to estimate the impact of some Iranian social characteristics on households’ income and food consumption. Then, the variance– covariance structure of income and food consumption processes is utilized, which has described by the Permanent-Temporary model (PT) to identify the characterizing parameters, which link the behavior of consumption and income to estimate the consumption-smoothing parameters. The results indicate that there is nearly complete food consumption smoothing against temporary and permanent income shocks throughout the sample period. Moreover, households’ social indicators have significant effects on their food consumption, income levels, and insurance opportunities.