Economic analysis of consumer spending on meat and grains in rural and urban Egypt

Abstract

The research aimed to study the extent to which there is a difference in the patterns of food consumption in urban and rural Egypt by examining the family budget by calculating the relative importance of commodity groups in terms of average per capita expenditure in urban and rural Egypt, and studying the development of national and individual consumption of commodity groups in Egypt, and statistical estimation of functions Expenditures per capita for commodity groups in rural and urban Egypt, estimating spending flexibilities and comparing results. The research relied on the secondary data published by the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics related to the family budget research "Income, Expenditure and Consumption Research" for the years 2015 and 2018. A time series of food balance bulletins from 2005 to 2019 in addition to studies closely related to the subject of the study. The results of the research showed an increase in the relative importance of individual expenditures on total food and beverages in 2017/2018 compared to 2014/2015. As for the items of individual expenditures on the group of major commodities, expenditures on meat consumption were always the highest, especially in 2014/2015, at a rate of 30.12 Likewise in the countryside, grain consumption amounted to 19,521 thousand tons in 2005 and rose to 20,915 thousand tons in 2019 than it was in 2005, an increase of 7.1%, and the average per capita share reached 135 kilograms in 2005 and rose to 211.5 in 2019 than it was in 2005, an increase of 56.7%. It is clear from the expenditure function in 2015 that there is no effect on the degree of urbanization, that is, there is no difference between rural and urban with respect to expenditures on the group of cereals. It is also clear from the research that there is no difference in the spending elasticity of meat in 2015 and 2018 for urban and rural areas, which means that there are no changes between the consumption patterns of rural and urban Egypt.