Economic Household Model. This approach dates back to the work of Xxxxxx (1965), who developed a work - leisure model, where the household is the unit of analysis. He reasoned that households produce utility-yielding commodities (outputs) with combinations of market goods and time. The household can allocate its time to one of three uses: a) labour market time (generates income to acquire market goods), b) household production time (e.g. cooking), and c) consumption time (e.g. eating). In relation to food, meals typically require labour to be allocated to all three uses: labour market time to generate the income to pay for ingredients, production time to cook the meal and consumption time for eating. The uses of time are however competitive with each other – each additional hour spent at work is one less hour that can be devoted to household production or consumption. Xxxxx (1992) utilises Xxxxxx’x (1965) model to analyse the effects of increases / decreases of income and disposable time on food purchasing behaviour. The former argues that Western societies witnessed in the post-war period rising incomes and an increase in the number of women in the labour market. The rise in women’s working hours led to a decrease in the time available to spend on household activities (Xxxxxxx et al. 1996). Xxxxx (1992) argues that households with more money but less time to spend on household activities will substitute non-convenience foods for convenience foods, reducing the time spend on cooking. To test the relationships between disposable time, disposable income and food choice, he draws on cross-sectional data from Denmark. Foods were classified into non- convenience goods (i.e. ingredients used for cooking from scratch), semi-convenience goods (e.g. ready made sauces) and convenience goods (i.e. ready meals, meals eaten out of the home in bars and restaurants). Relative expenditure on the three food categories was assessed in terms of the household’s disposable and non disposable time. Households that are both rich and busy were supposed to demand a higher proportion of convenience foods, while those households that are poor with a lot of disposable time would utilise a higher proportion of cheaper, non-convenience foods. Figure 2 presents the results of Xxxxx’x (1992) analysis. Source: Bonke (1992) and Xxxxxxx et al. (1996) Figure 3 Expenditure on food with different degrees of convenience according to household resources Figure 2 indicates that, in accordance with Bonke’s (1992) hypothesi...
