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Abstract
Full-time working within agriculture is now relatively uncommon; many farm households are still
active in the off-farm labor markets, in and outside the local economy. This paper examines the
impact of a portfolio of off-farm incomes on food consumption patterns using Working-Leser
framework, under two-stage budgeting, to isolate the off-farm income effect from the pure
expenditure elasticities. This is analyzed for rural farm households in transitional Albania. The
results indicate that food at home consumption has a positive and inelastic association with offfarm
wage income, whereas, the response food away from home consumption is positive and
highly elastic. Remittances generate the opposite effect on food consumption both at home and
away from home, leading to reduction of food consumption. A disaggregated analysis reveals that
off-farm wage income increases households’ consumption of cereal-based foods at home; we find
the opposite and significant effect for remittances. These findings should be of interest to
policymakers in Albania, especially in designing poverty and nutrition programs.