The Impact of Income Quintile on the Frequency of Fruit and Vegetable Intake by Inhabitants of European Countries

Elena Hošková – Faculty of Economics and Management, Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra, Tr. A. Hlinku č.2, 949 76 Nitra, Slovakia

Abstract: Many studies agree that the population’s income affects compli­ance with the principles of rational nutrition. The basis of rational nutrition is the consumption of fruits and vegetables. The paper aims to identify Euro­pean countries in which inhabitants of the same income groups have sim­ilar preferences regarding the weekly frequency of fruit and vegetable con­sumption. EU-SILC data from 2019, from 30 European countries, available at Eurostat, were used for the analyses. The frequency of consumption of fruit and vegetables was selected at least once a day, from 1 to 3 per week, from 4 to 6 per week and never or occasionally. Descriptive analysis, factor anal­ysis, principal component analysis method and cluster method of hierarchi­cal clustering, Ward’s method, were used for the analyses.

The results of the descriptive analysis show that, on average, the most pre­ferred frequency of consumption of fruits and vegetables is at least once a day in the monitored countries. It is most preferred by inhabitants of the fifth quintile (55.707% for fruit consumption, and 54.796% for vegetable con­sumption). The least preferred frequency of fruit and vegetable consump­tion is never or occasionally. It is the least preferred among the inhabitants of the fifth quintile (5.826% for fruit consumption, and 2.767% for vegeta­ble consumption). Factor analysis identified 7 factors that affect the prefer­ences of inhabitants regarding the consumption of fruits and vegetables in the monitored countries. These factors were the inputs to the cluster analy­sis, which divided the countries into 5 clusters. The largest cluster of coun­tries was made up of the inhabitants of the Czech Republic, Denmark, Esto­nia, Greece, Austria, Poland, Slovakia, Finland, Sweden, Iceland, and Turkey, where up to 35% of the monitored countries were included.

7th International Scientific Conference – EMAN 2023 – Economics and Management: How to Cope With Disrupted Times, Ljubljana, Slovenia, March 23, 2023, SELECTED PAPERS, published by: Association of Economists and Managers of the Balkans, Belgrade, Serbia; ISBN 978-86-80194-70-7, ISSN 2683-4510, DOI: https://doi.org/10.31410/EMAN.S.P.2023

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