Household food expenditures at home and away from home in Turkey

Abstract

Turkey has experienced important sociodemographic and economic changes shaping food markets with the resultant significant changes on the consumers’ away from home and at home food consumptions. We analyze the effects of socio-demographic and economic factors of expenditures on food away from home (FAFH) and food at home food (FAH) for both urban and rural households. The study is based on the 2009 Turkish Household Expenditure Survey data and we model the food expenditure patterns using the multivariate sample selection approach. The empirical results suggest that urban households tend to spend more on FAFH than FAH as income increases, while the reverse is true for rural households. Other socio- demographic factors of households show varying impacts on FAFH and FAH between the two household groups.