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Food Demand Patterns in Tanzania: A Censored
Regression Analysis of Microdata
Ananda Weliwita, David Nyange and Hiroshi Tsujii*
ABSTRACT
This paper estimates price and food expenditure elasticities of demand
for twelve food groups in Tanzania by applying the linearized Almost
Ideal Demand system to the latest household survey data. In estimation,
particular attention is paid to the presence of zero expenditure and
the effects of demographic characteristics on food demand patterns. The
results indicate that maize, rice, other cereals, pulses, sugar, edible
oils, fish, starch, fruits and vegetables, meat, and other foods are
price inelastic while milk and dairy products have unitary elasticity
of demand. Most of the food groups are income elastic. The
results also reveal that household income and family size have
significant effects on food demand patterns. Main policy
implications of the results include inter alia (a) income oriented
policies will have a greater effect on promoting food consumption than
price related policies, (2) a significant price decline associated with
increased production of maize and rice will benefit a majority of
households since the two commodities have high budget shares and low
own-price elasticities of demand, and (3) meat was found to be
inelastic with respect to the expenditure on food.
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* The authors
are, respectively, Economist in the Urban Economy and Finance Branch,
United Nations Human Settlements Program, Nairobi, Kenya; Senior
Lecturer in the Dept. of Agricultural Economics, Sokoine University of
Agriculture, Morogoro, Tanzania, and Professor in the Natural Resource
Economics Division, Graduate School of Agriculture, Kyoto University,
Kyoto, Japan. The authors thank the Bureau of Statistics, the Republic
of Tanzania for providing data. The manuscript was completed
while the first two authors were a Visiting Research Fellow and a
doctoral student, respectively, at the Graduate School of Agriculture,
Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan.
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Weliwita,
Nyange and Tsujii. 2003. Sri Lankan Journal of
Agricultural Economics. Volume 5 (1). Pp. 9 - 34
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