The behaviour of household food consumption expenditure in Sri Lanka (2006–2016): An APE approach in urban, rural, and estate sectors

The Average Propensity to Expend (APE) is one of the tools to analyse a household’s food consumption expenditure behaviour. The objective of the study is to find out urban, rural and estate sector household’s food expenditure patterns using the APE method. For that micro data gathered from HIES in 2006/07, 2009/10, 2012/13 and 2016. The study area was selected as Badulla, Kandy, Nuwara-Eliya and Ratnapura districts which consist of all three sectors in each district and comprise a minimum of 5% of the population in each sector. Totally 13881 samples consisting of urban 2010, rural 8508 and estate 3363 were selected. Ten major food groups of 112 food items and monthly household total expenditure and monthly household food group expenditure data were used for analysis. Results showed that APE on rice, wheat, pulses, egg and milk foods was relatively high in the estate sector; bread, meat and fish were relatively more APE in the urban sector and APE on vegetables and coconut was relatively higher in the rural sector. Relatively more APE variation observed in the estate sector implies that estate sector households were more responsive to income increases.