The impact of socio-economic factors on food away home consumption in Turkey

This study investigated the association of demographic and socioeconomic variables with food-away-from-home (FAFH) expenditures in Turkish household. The data used in this study were obtained from the Household Budget Survey, conducted by Turkish Statistical Institute in 2009. The two-step decision process for FAFH consumption was examined using Heckman's approach. The first step was a Probit regression to estimate the probability of FAFH participation. The second step was to predict FAFH expenditure using OLS with the inverse Mills ratio for correcting sample selection bias. The results indicated that income, the level of women education, family type and female labor participation are important variables determining food away from home consumption in Turkey.