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Abstract
The paper intends to analysis household consumption pattern and its impacton inequality in rural and urban sectors after reform period (1993–94 to 2011–12). Thisstudy is mainly based on secondary data from different National Sample Survey Office(NSSO) round (50th, 55th, 61th, 66th, 68th) of ‘Level and Pattern of Consumer Expenditure’and time period has been taken since 1993–94 to 2011–12. The NSSO provides clearevidence of the downwards trends in share of food expenditure and increase the share ofnon–food expenditure in total consumption expenditure during this time period. The mainfinding of paper is ‘Cereals and cereals substitute’ consumption expenditure has declinedaround from 24 per cent to 12 per cent in rural sector and 12 per cent to 7.5 per cent inurban sector since 1993–94 to 2011–12. The combined share of pulses, milk, meat,vegetables and fruit etc. has declined about 27.7 per cent to 26 per cent and 29 per cent to21 per cent in rural and urban respectively. The coarse cereals consumption (kg) hasdeclined about 71 per cent in rural sector and 64 per cent in urban sector over the sameperiod. The inequality has increased in most of states in rural and urban areas. The shareof consumption expenditure bottom 30 per cent has declined and top 30 per cent peoplehas increased in rural and urban sectors. The Gini Coefficient has increased 0.280 to 0.302and 0.340 to 0.379 in rural and urban sectors respectively since 1993–94 to 2011–12.The situation in urban sector has worsened rather than rural areas over the 18 years.