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Regional stylization of consumer expenditure with a specific reference to food articles

The paper aims to analyse consumer expenditure pattern in general and expenditure on different food items in particular across the regions and expenditure classes. The present analysis is based on the Unit Level Data of CES, 68 round (2011-12) with an URP as a reference period. All the States and Union Territories were categorized in four zones (East, North, South & West). The analyses have been carried out at regional and national level for both rural and urban sector separately. Summarily, the stylization of regions has been done based on the food habits and pattern in consumption expenditure.


Introduction
India is a diverse country and it can be safely assumed that no other country in the world is blessed with such rich diversity. Languages, tradition, life styles etc. are distinctly different in each region of the country. Consumption pattern is no exception. Through this paper we have attempted to bring out this divergence in consumption pattern in different regions of the country. In the recent years, India has also witnessed a great shift in dietary preference of people. This change has been more pronounced in the post-liberalization era. India not only experienced rapid economic transformation but also substantial changes in many other dimensions of wellbeing, including in its diet pattern (Ali 2007 Radhakrishna and Reddy 2004) [1,2,5,6,11,13,17,18,16,14] . There is a trend of declining cereal intake particularly coarse cereals and very low increase of consumption of other food items in the rural diet, which has often been explained as an expected outcome of economic growth. Diets evolve over time and are influenced by factors such as income, prices, individual preferences and beliefs, cultural traditions, as well as geographical, environmental, social and economic factors. In India over the past two decades this diet diversification may be mainly income induced, impact of globalization, increasing urbanization and changing lifestyle of people (NCAER 2014) [12] . Also, better awareness about the nutritional value of different food items which leads to people making more informed choices may have contributed to this change in the diets. To ascertain which factor contributed how much to the changemay be an interesting topic for a separate research. These changes in diet pattern, however, are not uniform rather they vary across various socio economic groups (Gupta and Mishra 2013) [7] . There are distinct food regions in India. It is well known that wheat is much preferred in northern and central region, and rice in the southern and eastern region. Western region displays higher relative consumption of coarse cereals. In rural India, meat consumption is quite low however its higher consumption is mainly seen in western coastal region. There are number of factors which make and shape food regions such as food culture, taste and preferences, local availability, market, income etc. (Gupta and Mishra 2014) [8] .

Data Source
The Surveys of National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) are the most important and regular source of information of consumer surveys on different themes like consumer expenditure, nutrition, education, employment, health and housing, migration, wages and other issues of contemporary importance. Due to its pan-India coverage, the results of such surveys have been used in devising and evaluating various policies and programmes and their welfare effects. Some examples include examining equity and efficiency effects of transfers and taxes, nutritional benefits of food subsidies, and planning for different sectors of economy (Deaton, 1997;Murthy, 1967) [4,10] . In absence any other source of reliable information, these periodical surveys assume greater importance and reliance on such 'natural experiments' increases and are often used for evaluating the impact of many economic and social policies. The Consumer Expenditure Surveys (CES) of National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) are the most important and regular source of information of consumer surveys of different food and non-food items in India. The country has vast geographical spread, diverse topography and cultural variety and the same is reflected in the food habits too. While the publications of the CES provide information on various food articles for major states, the pattern across the regions is an area of interest to study in detail. The paper aims to analyse consumer expenditure pattern in general and in food items in particular across the regions and expenditure classes, which is not readily available otherwise.

Methodology
The National Sample Survey (NSS) regularly conducts surveys covering the entire country on various parameters and issues which are of national interest. These surveys can be broadly categorized into two viz. thin and quinquennial rounds. Thin rounds are generally conducted on annual basis involving smaller sample size whereas the quinquennial rounds have much larger sample size and conducted at an interval of 5 years. The importance of data collected through these surveys is very high as it is the only source of such robust and comprehensive information in the country and most of the government policies and programmes are heavily dependent on it for taking critical decisions. There are data pertaining to several parameters which helps in estimating consumers' expenditure on various items both in rural and urban sector, state-wise which are then aggregated to the national level. The Unit level data of 68 th Round of CES for the year 2011-12 (CES, 2014) [3] has been used for present analysis. The reference period used for above information is "Uniform Reference Period (URP)".This is the measure of Monthly Per Capita Expenditure (MPCE)obtained by the NSS consumer expenditure survey when household consumer expenditure on each item is recorded for a reference period of "last 30 days" (preceding the date of survey). The published reports of CES generally provide different fractile classes of MPCE distribution. However, for the ease of understanding, the pentile classes of MPCE distribution have been constructed. The first pentile of the distribution of MPCE over population of any region or domain is the level of MPCE below which 20% of the population lie, the second pentile, the level below which 40% of the population lie, and so on. In short, the population has been divided into 5 classes of MPCE. Pentile classes are formed separately for the rural and the urban sector of India and denoted as MPCE 20 . The States and Union Territories as reported in the data are categorized in four regions viz., East, North, South and West, as provided below. In order to show effect of socio-economic and regional variables on consumer expenditure on different food items, a multiple regression analysis has been attempted. The following socio-economic and regional variables have been selected and recoded from the NSS 68 th round (2011-12) unit level data.
 Household Size  Regions: All states and Union Territories have been categorized into four regions, as mentioned above: North, East, West & South. In multiple regressions, "North" is the reference category. In multiple linear regressions, "self-employed in nonagriculture" is the reference category in Rural areas, whereas "regular wage/salary earnings" has been taken as a reference category.
 Social class: Scheduled Tribe (ST), Scheduled Caste (SC), Other Backward class(OBC) and 'Others', where 'others' is the reference category.

Results and Discussions Region-wise population
To begin with, it is necessary to understand the population distribution across the regions. In the CES 2011-12, the estimated human population was 792 million and 317 million in rural and urban areas respectively. In rural area, the Northern region accounted for 31% of total population, closely followed by the Eastern region (30%). In urban area, the Western region has the highest population share of 30%, followed by the Northern (28%) and Southern region (27%). At the country level, 71% of population lived in the rural sector and the balance 29% in the urban sector. Across the regions, the Eastern and Northern regions have higher percentage of rural population (83% and 74% respectively) as compared to national proportion, whereas Western and Southern regions have relatively higher proportions of urban population (37% and 36% respectively) as against the national average.   1  28  19  8  20  20  29  25  14  16  20  2  25  19  16  20  20  21  20  20  19  20  3  20  19  20  19  20  18  18  21  22  20  4  17  20  25  22  20  18  17  22  22  20  5  10  23  31  19  20  14  19  23  21  20  All  100  100  100  100  100  100  100  100  100  100 Share of food expenditure At the country level, the total monthly per capita expenditure (MPCE) stood at ₹1,279 in rural sector and ₹2,399 in urban sector. Across the regions, the Southern region reported higher MPCE both in rural and urban sector, whereas, Eastern region had lower MPCE in rural and urban sectors than that of national average. At the country level, 49% of total expenditure is shared by food items in rural sector and the same was 38% in urban sector. In Eastern region, the share of food expenditure was relatively higher in rural and urban sectors. With the advancement in MPCE 20 classes, the share of food expenditure reduced substantially from 57% to 28% in urban sector than the rural sector (61% to 38%). Among the regions, the decline in the share of food expenditure was relatively higher in Southern region in rural sector with the improvement in per capita expenditure in comparison to the same at the national level. For instance, in rural sector, the proportion of food expenditure in total MPCE declined by 23 percentage points at the country level from MPCE 20 Class 1 to 5, the same dropped by 27 percentage points in the Southern region. Unlike rural sector, the reduction in the proportion of food expenditure in total MPCE with the progression of MPCE 20 was in tandem with the national pattern across all regions in urban sector, except Western region. Milk & milk products and egg, fish & meat are the major sources of animal protein for human beings. If both of them are combined, the relative expenditure towards these was lower in the Eastern and Western regions in comparison to national aggregates, whereas it was the highest in the Northern region, followed by the Southern region. However, the subtle difference isin the Northern region, the contribution of milk & milk products was close to 90% in expenditure towards animal protein food items, while the same was almost equally distributed between milk & milk products and egg, fish & meat in the Southern region.
In terms of incidence of consumption, similar pattern like in the rural sector was witnessed in urban sector in cereal, pulses, oil, vegetables, fruits, beverages and processed food. Also, the variations in expenditure across the regions in above items were relatively lower than that of rural sector. As far as consumption expenditure on milk & milk products is concerned, the urban sector showed almost similar pattern as it was in the rural sector, however, the inter-regional variation in value of expenditure was lower as compared to rural sector. While at the national level, the incidence of expenditure towards egg-fish & meat remained same at 63%, yet there were regional diversions. In Northern and Western regions, the incidence of expenditure towards egg-fish & meat was higher compared to the same in rural sector. The value of MPCE towards egg, fish and meat was the highest in the Eastern region in urban sector, which was not the case in rural sector. On the whole, it can be summarized that in terms of intake of animal protein foods in urban sector, the Northern and Southern regions were relatively better off, while it was the least in the Western region.

Share of food items by MPCE classes
Having looked at the pattern in expenditure on different food items and their inter-regional variations singularly, it would also be equally interesting to understand the regional pattern in the distribution of food expenditure across different food items. Among the regions, the Eastern region reported relatively higher share towards cereals both in rural and urban sector. Similarly, the expenditure on oil was higher in the Western region. Higher share of milk &milk products was noticed in the Northern region, whereas egg, fish &meat occupied relatively larger pie in the Eastern and Southern regions. Vegetables had marginally higher share in the Eastern region. Processed food, in the Southern regionespecially in rural sector, had relative higher share in food expenditure.

Consumption inequalities
To substantiate the regional variation and changing pattern with the change in MPCE 20 classes, the consumption inequalities for major food articles have been attempted. The inequalities have been measured with the help of Lorenz Curve. A Lorenz curve is a cumulative frequency curve and essentially used to measure how equally or unequally population and consumption expenditure are distributed in the society. The Lorenz curve and Lorenz ratio are indicators of inequality. The Lorenz ratio provides a summary measure of relative inequality based on the Lorenz curve. Concentration curve and concentration ratio are generalizations of Lorenz curve and Lorenz ratio, respectively. The value of the concentration ratio ranges from 0 to 1. Lower the ratio, lesser the inequality in the society, the distribution of the assets/ expenditure is more even and vice-a-versa. The concentration ratios for different food articles have been estimated across the regions. The Lorenz ratio for total consumption expenditure was 0.308 and 0.386 in rural and urban India respectively. In comparison to national inequality in total consumption expenditure, it was higher in the Southern parts of the country in the rural sector and the same was higher in the Northern region in urban sector. Notably, the inequality was much lower in Eastern region in rural sector. Similarly, the Western region exhibited lower disparity in both rural and urban sector as compared to national estimates of inequality. Across different food items, the consumption expenditure on cereals expectedly showed the lowest inequality both in rural and urban sector. Also, the inequalities in case of pulses, oil and vegetables were lower in rural and urban India. The inequality coefficients were relatively higher in milk & milk products, egg, fish & meat, fruits and beverages in rural sector, whereas it was higher in case of fruits and processed food in urban sector. In rural sector, the inequality was the highest in the Northern region in milk & milk products, while in case of egg, fish & meat, it was the highest in the Southern region. The expenditure on milk & milk products was more equitably distributed in urban sector as compared to rural counterpart and so was the case of egg, fish & meat. However, among all four regions, the Eastern region showed comparatively greater disparity in consumption expenditure of these two items in urban sector. Higher disparity may be noticed in expenditure towards processed food in urban segment of the country and it has been more or less uniform across all the regions.

Concluding Observations
Looking at the vast geographical spread, diverse topography, cultural variety and the food habits, the regions of India are stylized and summarized below based on the analyses of consumer expenditure on different food articles.
Eastern region:(i) Higher proportion of rural population,(ii) higher population belonging to MPCE 20 class 1 & 2, (iii) lowest per capita expenditure, (iv) higher share of food expenditure in MPCE, (v) higher allocation of food expenditure on cereals & cereal substitutes especially in