Life-Cycle Consumption of Food at Home in France: The Household Production Approach

Résumé

Over the next few decades, the share of the elderly population in France will increase steadily. There is concern that aging households cannot maintain the pre-retirement level of consumption. Although there is empirical evidence that the expenditure on non-durables decreases as households age, there is no evidence whether the consumption decreases as well. We use household production approach to investigate whether the households use the varying life-cycle availability of the two inputs of the household production function – time and money, to sustain consumption. Our results indicate that the households engage in strategic shopping by purchasing more ingredient foods and engage in home production more aggressively as they age. Our main finding indicates that despite the declining food expenditures, the home food consumption steadily increases through life cycles, well after the retirement age. It would mean that, on average, the total quantity of foods is not an issue among elderly. The next step would be to analyze whether the composition of the diet evolves over the life-cycle, especially after retirement. Keywords: Aging, Life-cycle consumption, Household production, Opportunity cost of time JEL Codes: D12, D91