Measurement of inequality by components of farm household consumption expenditures

Abstract

Inequality in consumption levels of families, both nationally and internationally has been studied by Theil. However, empirical studies that measure inequality in farm household consumption, to our knowledge, have not been performed. This study measures inequality in farm household consumption. In addition, the study also measures inequality in consumption based on farm typology and farming region. Results from this analysis show consumption inequality among farm households is lower than consumption inequality among all other households. Results indicate that ‘other expenditures’ component has the highest inequality and ‘food and household supplies’ component has the lowest inequality. Further, farm typology has information about difference in consumption expenditures; the typology is informative when it comes to the components of consumption while the regional decomposition is not.