Pattern and correlates of consumption expenditure in the rural areas of Punjab

The pattern of consumption expenditure in the rural areas of Punjab was evaluated based on the primary data collected from the 400 sample households. The findings revealed that cultivating households spent higher per-capita expenditure on food and non-food items than non-cultivating households in rural Punjab. Step-wise regression analysis found the level of education, size of land holdings, distance from the nearest town, size of household, number of dependents, total farm workers and total non-farm workers as the statistically significant correlates, creating the difference in monthly per capita consumption expenditure among the sample rural households.