In this paper, the behavior of households’ consumption expenditures is investigated in the life cycle model as one of the determinant factors of welfare. For this purpose, consumption expenditures were decomposed into age, cohort and time effects by using Deaton (1997) model. The main focus of this model is to explain the intergenerational behavior of consumption. Survey of long-term consumption expenditure through comparison of different generations represents valuable information about quality of individual and household's life during time.
This objective is fulfilled by constructing pseudo panel that combines twenty nine years of cross-sectional Household Expenditures and Income Surveys from 1984 to 2012. The pseudo panel is constructed with cohorts which are limited to those born between 1926 and 1980. Furthermore, unemployment rate will be reviewed as one of the factors that affect people's expenditures. High unemployment rate and vague perspective of labor market among youth and new generations makes this review much more important.
Results indicate that consumption expenditures of the younger cohorts relative to their predecessors at the same age increased, but the increasing rate is decreasing. The age effects results indicate that expenditures rise until age 50 and after that are relatively flat until age 60 and then declining gently. The year effects show that life cycle expenditure is consistent with economic changes during different years in Iran.
The results of unemployment rate show that between age 25 and 37 the unemployment rate is falling, and after that it is nearly constant. The results of cohort effects also suggest that in similar ages, there is no significant differences in the unemployment rate of those born between 1926 and 1970 but the cohort effects are rising for cohorts born after 1971.