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Household Expenditure Survey (household + expenditure_survey)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting100%

Selected Abstracts

Debt as a source of financial stress in Australian households

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONSUMER STUDIES, Issue 1 2006
Andrew C. Worthington
Abstract This paper examines the role of demographic, socio-economic and debt portfolio characteristics as contributors to financial stress in Australian households. The data are drawn from the most recent Household Expenditure Survey and relate to 3268 probability-weighted households. Financial stress is defined, among other things, in terms of financial reasons for being unable to have a holiday, to have meals with family and friends, to engage in hobbies and other leisure activities, and general money management. Characteristics examined include family structure and composition, source and level of household income, age, gender and marital status, ethnic background, housing value, debt repayment of various types and credit card usage. Binary logit models are used to identify the source and magnitude of factors associated with financial stress. The evidence provided suggests that financial stress is higher in families with more children and those from ethnic minorities, especially when reliant on government pensions and benefits, and lower in families with higher disposable incomes and housing values. There is weak evidence that Australia's historically high levels of household debt cause financial stress. [source]

Changes in food consumption expenditure in Malaysia

AGRIBUSINESS : AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL, Issue 1 2003
Akira Ishida
In rapidly developing Asian countries, food consumption has drastically expanded and diversified. Trends in Malaysian food consumption are typical of those of developing countries. The overriding objective of this article, therefore, was to explore the structural changes in food consumption expenditure in West Malaysia after the early 1970s when its food consumption diversified under rapid economic growth and urbanization. We have estimated Engel's expenditure elasticities for food items using aggregated cross-sectional data from the Household Expenditure Survey. Our estimated results clearly indicate that while the expenditure elasticities of away-from-home food, and the elasticities of at-home expenditures for meat, fruits and vegetables, milk and dairy products are relatively high, those of rice and sugar are low. This suggests that the food expenditure structure in West Malaysia has diversified, adding meat, fruits and vegetables, milk and dairy products to the most dominant food item, rice. Moreover, it is likely that the share of food away from home will increase with income enhancement and urbanization due mainly to economic growth. [EconLit citations: Q11 (Aggregate Demand and Supply)]. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Agribusiness 19: 61,76, 2003. [source]

A Critique of the Private Health Insurance Regulations

THE AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 3 2004
Rhema Vaithianathan
The private health insurance sector is one of the most regulated sectors in Australia. The Private Health Insurance Incentives Scheme, along with community rating, is intended to make private insurance equitable, profitable and popular. We argue that the subsidy to health insurance ought to be a very effective tool for increasing insurance,but it was ineffective because community rating was ineffective. Using data from the Household Expenditure Survey we find that despite community rating rules which prohibit age-adjusted premiums, young adults paid considerably less for their insurance than older adults. We conclude that insurers circumvented community rating through plan design, screening older consumers into more expensive plans. We also find that the penalty of 2 per cent per year for delaying insurance, introduced as part of the lifetime cover plan, is too low to be effective. We reflect on the New Zealand experience, where a completely deregulated insurance industry continues to be profitable and enjoys similar rates of coverage to those of Australia, and we ask whether Australia too could not benefit from complete deregulation. [source]

ECONOMIES OF SCALE IN HOUSEHOLD CONSUMPTION: WITH APPLICATION TO AUSTRALIA,

AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC PAPERS, Issue 2 2005
NANAK KAKWANI
This paper presents a general framework for defining the economies of scale in household consumption. It allows commodity specific economies of scale (taking into account the substitution effects). The chief contribution of the paper is to show how one can estimate economies of scale from cross section budget data without price information. The problem of identification that is inherent in these models is overcome by making use of some assumptions about the nature of goods and services employed in the estimation. The methodology developed in the paper is applied to Australian Household Expenditure Survey for 1984 to calculate item wise and overall economies of scale. [source]

Consumption and Income Inequality in Australia

THE ECONOMIC RECORD, Issue 233 2000
GARRY F. BARRETT
Consumption may be a more appropriate measure of household well-being than income or earnings. Using four ABS Household Expenditures Surveys collected between 1975 and 1993, we compare trends in consumption and income inequality among Australian households. We find that consumption is much more equal than income. While there were significant increases in both income and consumption inequality, consumption inequality rose by much less. One interpretation of the results is that some income inequality in Australia reflects transitory fluctuations which households can smooth,,and that part of the growth in income inequality reflects an increase in these transitory fluctuations. [source]