Food Demand Elasticities by Income Group by Urban and Rural Populations for Pakistan (Income INEQUALITIES‪)‬

INTRODUCTION This paper presents food demand elasticity estimates for the Pakistan by urban and rural populations by income quartile for thirteen food groups. Income and price elasticities are estimated using a new food demand estimation technique based on demand for characteristics. This new technique requires far less data than the usual econometric approaches and so may be implemented relatively quickly and cost-effectively. However, the resulting demand elasticity estimates depend directly on strong a priori assumptions made concerning food demand behaviour, but assumptions which do not depend on assumptions of weak or strong separability. Rather quite the opposite assumption is made--that the marginal rate of substitution between two foods depends directly on the levels of consumption of all other foods.