Distributional effects of rising food prices in Pakistan: Evidence from HIES 2001–02 and 2005–06 survey

The distributional characteristic measures how evenly or unevenly commodity group is distributed over the household total expenditure. The present study investigates the distributional effects of rising food prices in Pakistan. For this purpose, this study focuses on two different household integrated economic surveys (HIES) i.e., 2001–02 and 2005–06 and analyze the distributional effects for rural and urban segments of Pakistan. As there are considerable differences in the composition of the consumption basket between rural and urban, so the survey data of both years is disaggregated into four sub-samples which may divide according to the expenditure levels of rural–urban segments based on head count index. The result reveals that the distributional characteristic of meat, fruits, soft drinks and all ready‐made food products are low which implies that expenditures on these commodities are unevenly distributed over the total expenditures which favor rich families. It is evident that cereals, pulses and dairy products are the major source of welfare in rural–urban poors in Pakistan.