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When the factors affecting health expenditures are examined in the literature, it is seen that one of the most important factors is income. In this context, the purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between out-of-pocket health expenditures and disposable personal income and revealing the income elasticity of health expenditures.

Therefore, short/long-term coefficients were obtained by analyzing Westerlund (2007) co-integration analysis and pooled mean group (PMG) regression methods for 22 European Union (EU) member states during the period 2003–2017. In addition, a comparison of the long-term coefficients for each country was obtained with augmented mean group (AMG) estimator.

The results of the AMG and PMG tests show that the long-term coefficients between disposable personal income and health expenditures are 0.83 and 0.97, respectively. These results imply that there is a significant relationship between the variables, and that health care should be categorized in the group of normal goods. However, the fact that the long-term coefficient is very close to 1, despite being classified in the category of necessity goods, requires more care to be taken in evaluating whether health services are luxury goods or necessity goods.

The use of second generation econometric tests on both cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneity demonstrates the value of the study. On the other hand, obtaining similar results by investigating the relationship between variables using different appropriate econometric models reveals the importance of the methodology used in this study. It reveals important details in terms of the literature regarding the long-term and short-term results obtained in this study.

As China’s industrial structure continues to upgrade and optimize, the consumption capacity of rural residents gradually improves and the role of consumption in economic growth is increasingly prominent. Against the background of weak external demand, the untapped potential of rural consumption has become a key force in expanding domestic demand. As one of the important means that the government has long relied on, fiscal support for agriculture has played a crucial role in activating the rural consumer market. This manuscript aims to explore the impact of local fiscal support for agricultural expenditure (FSAE) on rural consumption in China, as well as to examine the mediating role of the level of rural financial development.

In this manuscript, the authors use the provincial panel data of 31 provinces in China from 2000 to 2020. The data of all variables mainly come from China Statistical Yearbook and China Rural Statistical Yearbook. According to the variable selection above, 651 sample data of 31 provinces and cities across China from 2000 to 2020 are organized. In terms of methodology, multiple fixed-effects panel model is applied to regression.

Firstly, FSAE varies significantly, while rural consumption slowly but steadily rises, with a relatively stable consumption structure. Secondly, FSAE has a significant positive effect on rural consumption. Thirdly, mediation testing indicates that mechanisms such as income, uncertainty and financial development have significant positive mediating effects on rural consumption. Thirdly, there is evident regional heterogeneity in FSAE’s impact on rural consumption. The Western regions, under government fiscal support, show a more significant effect on the elevation of rural consumption levels, while the role of FSAE in optimizing the consumption structure of rural residents in eastern and central regions is more pronounced.

Firstly, a systematic examination of local FSAE and rural consumption has been conducted, enriching relevant theories. Secondly, utilizing econometric empirical methods to research the relationship between local FSAE and rural consumption provides an exploratory extension to empirical studies on rural consumption in China. This offers empirical evidence for local fiscal support in agricultural development and the promotion of rural consumption.

This study aims to review the computational framework of SDGs in India, so that a mid-course correction can be contemplated.

This study deploys, inter alia, econometric analysis to probe the robustness of indicators of SDG India Index 3.0. Methodologically, the study intensively probes the robustness of SDG India index and extensively refers to the global SDG indexes for cross-checking.

Though the three editions of SDGI index mark significant efforts taken towards measuring the progress of SDGs in India, the paradigm suffers from the problem of too many indicators chasing only few targets, quantitative and qualitative issues with indicators, vintage pollution, partial coverage of targets and robustness issues.

This study has the limitation that it could not check the robustness of SDG scores with different weights assigned to indicators and future researchers can take up that interesting assignment.

Since measuring the SDG progress through SDG index is a global endeavour, the findings of this study are important for almost all countries of the world, as it is still not too late to do mid-course correction because it is not the measurement that matters at the end of the day, rather it is the outcome of sustainable development that every country cares about.

The obfuscation of layers of SDG index in crafty, glossy and power-point-presentation-oriented SDG reports should get the reality check through such review of the computational framework of SDGs.

This is the first study that unpacks the layers of SDG index computation in general and comprehensively reviews the Indian SDG indexing method in particular.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between financial inclusion and household expenditure behaviour among Ghanaian households, by taking into account both formal and informal financial inclusion channels.

Propensity score matching as well as instrumental variable techniques are applied to data from the Ghana Living Standard Survey to investigate the effect of financial inclusion on the share of total expenditure devoted to different categories, including food, health, education, housing, durables, temptation goods and other goods.

Informal financial inclusion seems to have no substantial effect on households’ consumption behaviour, whereas formal financial inclusion significantly affects it. The study finds that formal financial inclusion is inversely related to the budget share devoted to short-term expenditure (food, temptation goods and other goods such as transport and recreation). Conversely, financially included households spend more on long-term expenditure such as education, housing and consumer durables, thus, suggesting a diversion effect towards investment in long-term physical and human capital.

The investigation of the heterogeneous impact across households (male vs female headed, rural vs urban) has essential policy implications on how financial inclusion can be improved among the disadvantaged groups, and with what effects.

The study focuses on the importance of financial inclusion in Ghana, considering both formal and informal financial inclusion channels. Previous studies only examined the overall effects on household welfare, overlooking the impact on household expenditure composition and consumption shares. The analysis also considers the heterogeneous impact of financial inclusion on households based on the gender of the household head and the location where households reside (rural, urban).

This study explores whether media coverage of Chinese food safety guide consumer behaviour and determines its impact.

Using data from the China Family Panel Studies, this study implements unsupervised machine learning methods to quantitatively identify themes in news media coverage of food safety across various provinces and regions. Based on these findings, this study examines the impact of coverage of food safety on consumer behaviour related to FAFH.

We find that media coverage of food safety in the restaurant sector significantly decreases household expenditure on FAFH relative to total expenditure. While negative coverage substantially decreases expenditure on FAFH, non-negative coverage significantly increases it. Reports of food safety incidents outside consumers’ province are negatively correlated with expenditure on FAFH, whereas reports within province significantly increases such spending. Further, the negative impact of media coverage on FAFH spending is less pronounced among higher-income families, households headed by individuals with high educational levels and those with low sensitivity to newspaper information. A robust government information infrastructure also mitigates this negative impact.

The findings have important policy reference value for promoting the healthy development of catering and other life services by improving news reporting and the regulatory system.

This article employs machine learning methods to identify news reports related to food safety in the catering industry quantitatively and incorporates them into the study of household consumption in China. Consequently, this not only fills a gap in the existing literature but also provides a new perspective for interdisciplinary research in economics, sociology and computer science.

Examining the impact of socioeconomic status (SES) and expenses spent on food preparation on nutritional intake has always been one of the critical concerns for policymakers. This study aims to investigate the association between household food expenditure as well as SES and dietary nutrient intake in Kermanshah, Iran.

In this cross-sectional study, households were randomly selected from different strict in Kermanshah, Iran. Data were collected with an SES questionnaire, a demographic data collection form, a weekly food purchase checklist and a food record. The authors performed the analysis of covariance to determine the relationship of dietary nutrient intake of study participants across quintile categories of SES and total food expenses per day.

Out of 125 households, 119 households including 401 people finished the study. A significant association was observed between higher SES and higher intake of vitamin B2 (p-value = 0.03). Moreover, the household members at the top level of total food expenses per day had significantly greater dietary nutrient intake of energy (p < 0.001), potassium (p < 0.001), magnesium (p < 0.001), calcium (p < 0.001), zinc (p < 0.001), vitamin B2 (p < 0.001), B6 (p < 0.001), B12 (p = 0.002) and vitamin C (p = 0.04).

In our study, higher dietary nutrient intake was observed in the household members at the highest level of total food expenses daily as well as SES. Therefore, governments and policymakers should pay basic attention to optimizing food costs and improving the economic status of people.

The purpose of this study is to explore the potential and challenges of biogas utilization as an alternative and sustainable energy source in the Gurage zone of Southern Ethiopia, where traditional energy sources such as firewood and charcoal are widely used.

The study adopts a mixed-methods approach to collect and analyze data from different sources and perspectives. The research collects quantitative data from structured interviews with 200 rural households who use biogas or other energy sources, and qualitative data from key informant interviews and focus group discussions with biogas experts, local authorities and community leaders. Socioeconomic analysis is conducted to assess the importance of biogas in terms of income, expenditure, health and environmental benefits, and a multivariate probit model is used to identify the factors influencing biogas energy adoption among rural households.

The findings indicate that biogas users are more likely to substitute traditional energy sources with biogas for cooking, lighting and heating purposes. The model reveals that age, sex, education level, land size and livestock quantity influence biogas energy adoption, whereas income, distance to market and access to credit do not have a significant effect. The findings also show that biogas users have higher income, lower expenditure, better health and lower greenhouse gas emissions than nonusers.

The study concludes that the socioeconomic impact of biogas varies among households based on location and lifestyle. The study also highlights the need for further research on the technical, institutional and behavioral aspects of biogas utilization in different contexts.

To address the challenges faced by biogas users and their energy choices, such as lack of awareness, maintenance, quality control and affordability, the study suggests exploring biogas energy to meet the diverse needs of cattle owners in different regions. The study also recommends enhancing the capacity of local stakeholders, promoting public–private partnerships, and developing supportive policies and regulations for biogas development in Ethiopia.

The study implies that biogas utilization can contribute to social development by improving the living standards, health status and gender equality of rural households. The study also suggests that biogas utilization can foster social cohesion and empowerment by creating opportunities for collective action, knowledge sharing and income generation among biogas users and their communities.

The study provides a comprehensive and empirical analysis of the socioeconomic landscape of biogas utilization and the determinants of energy choice in the Gurage zone of Southern Ethiopia. The study also offers valuable insights and recommendations for policymakers, practitioners, researchers and other stakeholders involved in biogas development in Ethiopia and other developing countries.

This study aims to investigate the impact of local windfall gains from the Spanish Christmas lottery on household consumption behavior.

The study applies differences-in-differences to assess permanent income hypothesis (PIH) validity, examining pre- and postlottery consumption effects. Additionally, it also uses an instrumental variable regression, using the lottery shock as an instrument for total expenditures, to estimate the Engel curves.

The paper finds a PIH violation; households in winning region notably increase consumption on durable and nondurable goods compared to nonwinning ones. Moreover, durable goods consumption is responsive to lottery winnings, while nondurable goods consumption are unit-elastic to expenditure shocks.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first paper analyzing the effects of winning regions of the Spanish Christmas lottery in all types of consumption goods, testing its consequences in the PIH and estimating its effects in the Engel curves.

This study aims to analyse the consumption inequality between farm and non-farm households in rural Vietnam, using the data from the 2016 Vietnam household living standards survey.

The present paper applies the “recentered influence functions (RIF)” in “Oaxaca-Blinder (OB)” type decomposition as proposed by Firpo et al. (2018) to allow for the flexible distribution of the outcome variables and the non-randomness of non-farm employment that violates the classical linearity assumption.

Non-farm households have significantly higher per capita consumption expenditure than farm households for the entire distribution. The gap in expenditure is large at low percentiles and narrowing with higher percentiles. At 10th percentile, the gap is estimated at 27.1%, but it is decreasing to 11.1% at 90th percentile. Most of the gaps are explained by the differences in the observed characteristics between farm and non-farm households such as ethnicity, education, income, internal transmittances and household composition. Non-farm households are endowed with more productive factors that result in higher per capita consumption expenditure.

Gaps in ethnicity and education are found to be key predictors of the inequality in consumption expenditures between farm and non-farm households, then, government policies that are aimed at increasing access to non-farm employment and education for ethnic minorities and for rural poor households are pathways to improve rural household welfare and hence reduce inequality.

While the monetary returns to education are well documented in the economics literature, the studies on non-monetary returns to education are scarce. The purpose of this study is to provide new insights into the non-market outcomes by exploring how education influences the food consumption choices of households and how these effects vary across different socio-economic groups using household-level calorie consumption data from Sri Lanka.

This study uses two waves of Household Income and Expenditure Surveys – 2006/2007 and 2016. The methods adopted in analysing the data were descriptive statistics and the OLS regression model.

The empirical results show that educated poor households pay less per calorie compared to non-educated poor households, highlighting the role of education in improving the ability to make better food choices and manage household budgets more economically.

This study informs policy-makers of the importance of education for formulating food and nutritional policies, which aim to raise the standard of living of resource-poor and vulnerable households in Sri Lanka as well as other developing countries with similar socio-economic conditions.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first to explore the impact of education on the calorie consumption behaviour of people in the Sri Lankan context using nationwide household surveys.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-01-2022-0007