Descriptive Statistics of Food Expenditure among Phililippine Household, FIES Data

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Credit: AARON FAVILA

The average food expenditure by income group and geographical location in 2006 presented in Table 1 below (Food Income and Expenditure Statistics, 2006) . Among the food groups, rice grain accounts for the highest budget share at 30% of total households’ food expenditure. Rice remains the main staple food in the Philippines, contributing 35% of the total food calorie intake but as much as 60-65% of the households in the lowest income quintile (CPBD, 2008). Low income families spend a larger part of their income for rice consumption. Rice accounts for about 25% of total household’s expenditure in the low-income group. Families belonging to the high income bracket, on the other hand, allocate lower budget from their income for rice consumption at 17.8%.

Between urban and rural households, the latter allocates more budget for rice consumption at 27.5% of its share relative to urban households with 17.3%. Unlike rice, corn is a staple commodity for a very small portion of the Filipino household particularly in Central Vizayas and in some parts of Mindanao. This explains the small percentage of consumption for corn. The leafy vegetables, however, posted the lowest budget allocation relative to other food item in all population groups. Meat accounts for nearly 12% share of all total households with the budget allocation of urban households higher (15.3%) than those in their rural counterpart (11%). The budget allocation for meat increases with increase in income. On the other hand, the budget allocation for fish decreases with increase in income.

Table 1. Average Expenditure By Income Group and Geographical Locations
	Entire	Location		Income Group
Food Group	Sample	Urban	Rural	Low	Middle	High
Rice	0.2990	0.1773	0.2750	0.2430	0.2090	0.1748
	(0.1303)	(0.1012)	(0.1360)	(0.1334)	(0.1214)	(0.1226)
Corn	0.0314	0.0120	0.0471	0.0349	0.0256	0.0183
	(0.0817)	(0.0407	(0.1010)	(0.0864)	(0.0729)	(0.0735)
Fresh Fruits	0.0320	0.0332	0.0311	0.0318	0.0324	0.0320
	(0.0201)	(0.0205)	(0.0198)	(0.0204)	(0.0196)	(0.0200)
Leafy Vegetables	0.0181	0.1010	0.0205	0.0186	0.0172	0.0178
	(0.0129)	(0.0096)	(0.0146)	(0.0134)	(0.0118)	(0.0012)
Fruit Vegetables	0.0220	0.0199	0.0237	0.0225	0.0213	0.0216
	(0.0135)	(0.0116)	(0.0147)	(0.0137)	(0.0133)	(0.1222)
Meat	0.1290	0.1530	0.1097	0.1229	0.1383	0.1606
	(0.0748)	(0.0172)	(0.0713)	(0.0744)	(0.0741)	(0.0720)
Eggs	0.0216	0.0226	0.0208	0.0215	0.0218	0.0200
	(0.0131)	(0.0130)	(0.0130)	(0.0132)	(0.0216)	(0.0134)
Fish	0.1300	0.1166	0.1409	0.1335	0.1251	0.1197
	(0.0608)	(0.0530)	(0.0643)	(0.0620)	(0.0581)	(0.0592)

The data consists of 18,411 observations (Philippines); 8,243 observations (Urban Area); 10,168 observations (Rural Area); 11,490 observations (Low-income Group); 5,482 observations (Middle-income Group); 1, 436 observations (High-income Group); collected from individual Filipino households, 2004-2006.

* Standard deviations  are in parenthesis