Analysis of demand for fish in Bangladesh

Abstract

An analysis of fish consumption patterns, and how they are likely to change as income and relative price changes, is required to assess the welfare impact of technological and policy changes in the fisheries and aquaculture sectors. This analysis is based on a matrix of price and income elasticities of demand for fish by type, as fish is a heterogeneous product and consumption patterns may differ by type of product. This paper presents estimates of fish demand elasticities by fish type for Bangladesh, using individual household expenditure data (5,667 households) collected by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics in 1988/89. It uses a multistage budgeting framework that estimates a demand function for food in the first stage, a demand function for fish (as a group) in the second stage and a set of demand functions for fish by type in the third stage. Estimated demand elasticities vary across fish type and across income class. Among the various types of fish, carp have the highest (in absolute terms) own-price elasticity. Income elasticities of all fish types consistently fall with the increase in per capita expenditure level of households, but none of the fish types become an inferior good at the highest income quartile. Dried fish has the lowest income elasticities for the richest quartile of the population.