Household consumption of rice and beans in Brazil

Abstract

The aim of this study was to analyze the factors related to household consumption of rice and beans in Brazil. The data used were extracted from the family budget surveys of 2002/2003, 2008/2009 and 2017/2018, produced by the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (POF/IBGE). A pseudopanel approach was adopted, which was estimated using fixed effects. Results showed that factors such as location (urban/rural), price, income, education, gender, and age of the person responsible for the household, presence of adolescents and elderly, single parents and family size were important to determine the household purchase of rice and beans in the period 2002–2017. Household consumption of rice and beans seems to be characteristic of larger households, with older, male heads with fewer years of schooling. Thus, the fact that there is a tendency in Brazil toward the raising of smaller families – with females with higher education levels as the head of family – may help to explain the decrease of per capita household consumption of rice and beans in the country.