Human diet and health will always be a topical issue irrespective of the times, society, economic development, etc. The aim of this chapter is to highlight the presence or absence of correlations between food consumer expenditure and health goods and services consumer expenditure. Over three-quarters of the correlations between the consumer expenditure categories and subcategories are statistically significant and approximately a half of them underscore a moderate intensity. The patterns of the relationship between food consumer expenditure and health goods and services consumer expenditure for the same countries are identified. Twenty patterns which contain country groups are pointed out for the ten connections among consumer expenditure categories. The correlation between high food consumer expenditure and the high weight of people who are suffering from specific diseases is emphasized.
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According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2015), the consumer expenditure survey (CE) offers information about both the consumers’ expenditures and incomes and the consumers’ characteristics.
There are various studies that focus on different approaches to consumer expenditure. A comprehensive study is made by Dillman & House (2013) who describe the main issues of consumer expenditure surveys such as design, implementation, costs, the domains in which the data is used, the panel’s investigation, underreporting the data, differences between interview and diary surveys, sources of response error, nonexpenditure data, etc.
Some researchers examine the importance of consumer expenditure components, the volatility of consumer durable goods and spending, the consumer credit and debt, the influence of the consumer optimism and pessimism regarding the economy on their expenses for consumer goods and services, etc. (Frumkin, 2015, pp. 123-142).
Other studies focus on the methods used to collect consumer expenditure data (Crossley & Winter, 2015, pp. 23-52), on designing a method to measure poverty which takes into account the household expenditure net of out-of-pocket spending on health care (O’Donnell, Van Doorslaer, Wagstaff & Lindelow, 2008, pp. 213-220), the introduction of the internet panel as a new measurement method for household expenditures (Hurd & Rohwedder, 2015a, pp. 365-387), the assessment of the consumer expenditure interview survey and consumer expenditure diary survey (Bee, Meyer & Sullivan, 2015, pp. 204-240), etc.
Further analyses examine the importance of panel structure in interview surveys for gathering the consumer expenditure data (Parker, Souleles & Carroll, 2015, pp. 75-99), the crucial role of the balance edit in obtaining quality data of households spending in the consumer expenditure survey (Fricker, Kopp & To, 2015, pp. 347-364), the consequences of different methods used to collect consumer expenditure data in various countries on the quality of data gathered (Barrett, Levell & Milligan, 2015, pp. 263-288), the efficiency of Consumption and Activities Mail Survey (CAMS) against consumer expenditure survey in measuring saving, inequality, and finances of households (Hurd & Rohwedder, 2015b, pp. 388-413), the measurement of household’s expenditure patterns by using surveys whose timeframe covers at least one year against diary surveys which involve two weeks or quarterly frequency for data collection (Leicester, 2015, pp. 441-492), etc.