This paper presents food demand elasticity estimates for the
Pakistan by urban and rural populations by income quartile for thirteen
food groups. Income and price elasticities are estimated using a new
food demand estimation technique based on demand for characteristics.
This new technique requires far less data than the usual econometric
approaches and so may be implemented relatively quickly and
costeffectively. However, the resulting demand elasticity estimates
depend directly on strong a priori assumptions made concerning food
demand behaviour, but assumptions which do not depend on assumptions of
weak or strong separability. Rather quite the opposite assumption is
made - that the marginal rate of substitution'> between two foods
depends directly on the levels of consumption of all other foods. The
paper is organised as follows. The first section provides a brief
overview of the methodology used for undertaking the demand estimations.
The second section discusses the-data used for these estimations and
food consumption patterns. The third section presents the demand
elasticity estimates.