An Empirical Analysis of the Distribution of Consumption Expenditure among Farmers in Cotton Belt of Rural Punjab

The consumption of goods and services is a primary component of economic wellbeing.An average farmer household spent `115555 on food items, while the spending on non-food items amounted to `317295.The marginal farmer households allocated a considerable proportion of 37.61 per cent on food items, whereas this proportion decreased to 21.19 per cent among the large farmer households.On the other hand, the consumption expenditure made on non-food was 62.39 per cent among the marginal category households, while the share rose to 78.81 per cent among the large farm-size categories.The highest APC was found among the marginal farm-size category.The bottom 20 per cent of households of all the farm-size categories taken together appropriated only 7.14 per cent, whereas the top 20 per cent appropriated 44.11 per cent of the total average consumption expenditure.The distribution of per household as well as per capita consumption expenditure was highly skewed among the different farm-size categories.