EVALUATION OF THE KEY COMMODITIES AVAILABILITY FOR UKRAINIAN HOUSEHOLDS WITH DIFFERENT AVERAGE PER CAPITA EQUIVALENT INCOME

Abstract

The article is devoted to the development of tools for evaluating the level and dynamics of Ukrainian households' well-being, by considering the availability of key groups of goods for households with different levels of per capita income. The results should contribute to taking into account a greater number of essential aspects of the households lifestyle and economic capabilities for assessing the achieved level of well-being, its dynamics, the differences of its components for different population groups, allowing to make policy and programs for its implementation more sensitive to the real needs of different aim groups. Engel's curves (defined by the linear form of consumption dependence on income – Working's function) and income elasticity of consumption were used to assess the degree of satisfaction of needs in two commodities, which are key for assessing the households' well-being. It was evidenced, that the still high (more than two times higher than in developed countries) income elasticity of food consumption indicates the extreme limitation of the resource provision for investing in the development of human capital by the households. At the same time, the propensity of households to invest additional income in the purchase of goods created in healthcare is quite high – at the level of developed countries. More affluent households (which were expected to have a higher income elasticity of healthcare goods consumption) are more actively using the advances of insurance medicine, while less affluent households still rely only on "out-of-pocket" healthcare costs. So, relatively poorer households are faced a clear lack of resources to meet their needs: the absolute amount of healthcare goods consumption for the least wealthy households is reduced against the background of the increase in the share of relevant expenses in the composition of consumer spending.

Keywords

• Engel’s Law
• well-being
• household income
• concentration of consumer spending
• consumer spending
• Engel curves