Assessing the Impacts of Dried Fruit Price Surging on Nutritional Welfare of Consumers in Iran

Dried fruit price increases caused significant numbers of households to fall into nutritional poverty particularly in the developing world. The dried fruit prices increased disproportionately in Iran during the one-year period. While Increasing dried fruit prices resulted in decreasing some dried fruit purchases، it influenced the food security of many people. The objective of this article is to provide an assessment of decreasing nutritional well-being due to dried fruit price surging in rural and urban regions in Iran. In this study، each sample of rural and urban households divided to two various expenditure groups including high income and low income groups. Utilizing samples of 6014 rural households and 6860 urban households selected from national expenditure survey data of 2011 and 2012، censored quadratic approximations of the almost ideal demand system are estimated and nutritional well-being effects are discussed separately for each household group in these areas. The findings of this study indicate that respectively almost 62 percent and 56 percent of rural and urban households entering nutritional poverty due to recent dried fruit price surging.