Analysis of Household Expenditure on Food in Iran by Age - Period - Cohort Model and Pooled Regression

In recently years, demographic problems as the aging population and the reduction of household's size have been important issues in Iran. The study on the impact of demographic factors on food consumption is essential to establish policies on food security, social welfare, and agricultural marketing. From microeconomics perspective, the behavior study of generations is important, because historical events as well as preferences change over time may cause different behavior consumption of generations. From macroeconomics perspective, this study allows the examination of the life - cycle hypothesis. From marketing perspective, this study is important to recognize the behavior of food buyers. Therefore, this research tries to examine the impact of age structure, generational change and yearly shocks on food expenditures using Age-Period-Cohort (APC) analysis on pooled data of 323072 urban household's and 312358 rural households'. The results of this research show the increase of age lead to reduce food demand; food consumption for younger generations is less than older generations, and finally period shocks influence food expenditure.