Econometrica: Jul, 1962, Volume 30, Issue 3

Farmers' Budgets in a Depression Period

https://doi.org/0012-9682(196207)30:3<548:FBIADP>2.0.CO;2-E
p. 548-564

A. P. Barten, C. T. Leenders, H. Theil

The determining factor of consumption in budget analysis is not so much current income, but expected income or its capital value, which includes the capacity to earn income in the future. A budget survey of 68 Dutch farmers' families in the depression years 1935-1936 showed that most of them had dissavings. In the specification of the Engel curves for a number of items and for the aggregates of consumption expenditure by these farmers' families, the rental value of the cultivated land was introduced in addition to current income in order to represent expected income more adequately.