The aim of this paper is to estimate the income elasticity for thirty-six food commodities. The database used was the Household Budgeting Survey (POF, 1995/96) from IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics), which has extremely detailed information about consumption in eleven bigger Brazilian urban regions. The variables used in estimation process come from the survey micro-data. This procedure allowed that the logarithms of the prices of food and the monthly per capita familiar income were directly calculated from the individualized observations, instead of aggregate data. The methodology estimation was the QUAIDS model. The results allow deepening the knowledge on the differences of the consumption standards among the diverse income strata, as well as between distinct regions as Southeastern and South and the Brazilian Northeast. It was demonstrated that there is an insufficiency in the domiciliary food consumption in Brazil and that such fact is concentrated in the low-income families, in which the expenditure with foods represents the biggest share of the budget.
demand; income-elasticity; metropolitan regions; ECLAC budget; QUAIDS model
