Urban food consumption patterns in Canada: An empirical analysis

This is the third in a series of four technical publications on the study of consumer demand for food in Canada. Demand parameters for 122 food items were estimated, using data from the 1974 Urban Family Food Expenditure Survey. These parameters provide a basis for computing expenditure, income, quality, family size and price elasticities. The price elasticities were computed by using implicit prices derived from the expenditure and quantity data. The effects of partitioning the sample by income class, city and first and second halves of the year were also investigated. The analysis has produced a set of parameter estimates that are of generally high statistical quality, that agree with a priori reasoning, and that support results obtained from related empirical studies. In addition, the price elasticities obtained are novel to applied cross-section studies and are estimated at levels which can be rationalized with the prevailing time-series results.