| المستخلص: |
Expenditure on food in Egypt represents a major item in the total consumption budget like in most developing countries, where the average annual expenditure reached EGP 9829.4 which represents about 37.6% of the total family annual expenditure in the year 2012/2013. The statistics show that a large difference exists between the average family expenditure in rural and urban areas, the rate is about 34% in urban areas compared to 41.4% in rural areas. Based on that, this research aimed at studying the expenditure patterns of Egyptian families in rural and urban areas by applying statistical descriptive and quantitative methods on the data published by the Central Authority of the General Mobilization and Statistics regarding Income and expenditure in the years 2008/2009 to 2012/2013. The results of the studied period show that in urban areas the relative importance of meat only has been increased where expenditure on meat has increased from about 27% to about 30% of the total annual expenditure on food, while the relative importance of cereals and oils has decreased. In rural areas, the relative importance of meat, milk cheese and eggs has increased; the relative importance of fish reached 6% and remains unchanged while the relative importance of cereals, sugar and oil has decreased. The impact of income differences on family annual nutritional expenditure has been studied as well using three indicative income categories, and the general trend is that the relative importance of animal commodities witnessed some increase while the relative importance of vegetative commodities witnessed some decrease in all the three income categories in both rural and urban areas. Results of expenditure elasticity on nutritional commodities show that the expenditure elasticity on vegetables was less than others commodities, which can that vegetables are the main commodities for Egyptian family. Studying the impact of geographical position on the Egyptian family’s nutritional expenditure shows that the expenditure function is shifted upward in urban areas for fish, milk, cheese, eggs and fruits as a result of urbanization.
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