Investigating the Welfare Status of Household in North Khorasan Province using the Engel Curve

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Assistant Professor of Economics, Faculty of Economics and Political Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran

2 MA in Economics, Faculty of Economics and Political Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran

10.29252/ecoj.10.2.137

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to investigate the welfare status of households in northern Khorasan province and compare it with the average welfare of households in the whole country of Iran. Regarding the number of support organizations in Iran such as subsidies targeting organization, welfare organization, social security organization, Imam Khomeini Relief Committee and etc. To implement supportive policies to improve the welfare of households, there is a need for a quantitative index to be able to use that as benchmark applied to supportive policies. In this article, using household income and expenditure data of the Statistics Center of Iran during the period of 2005-2014, the household welfare status has been analyzed using Engel welfare Index. With regarding to the impact of some demographic variables of households, the Engel curve is estimated. The level of well-being of all households in Iran has decreased over the period. Also the level of welfare of households in the northern Khorasan province was lower than the whole country during the period under consideration. In general, rural households have a lower level of welfare than urban households. Therefore, according to the results of this study, governments and supportive organizations should consider the variables that affect the welfare state of households such as total expenditure households, household size, and other important demographic variables.

Keywords


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