The unconditional own-price elasticities are reported in Tables IV and V, and the drink elasticities are reported in
Tables XI–XIII.7 All of the main food groups exhibit inelastic demand with fats & starches and fruits & nuts the
most inelastic with values of 0.6. Dairy & eggs is the most elastic grouping at 0.9. Drink elasticities range in
value from 0.5 for diet soft drinks, regular soft drinks and diet cola among low consumers to 2.5 for water
among high consumers. All own-price elasticities, and the expenditure elasticities for the top level food and drink
model, have the 95% highest posterior density intervals excluding zero.8 In comparison, the systematic review of
food demand price elasticities by Andreyeva et al. (2010) reports own-price elasticities for soft drinks and other
beverages between 0.8 and 1.0. The wider range that we obtain may be attributed to the highly disaggregated
categories in our model. There is variation between groups for the drink elasticities, with those for high consumers
tending to be the largest. Demand by high consumers is elastic for all beverages except diet cola (0.9). In all three
groups, demand for water is the most elastic (2.5, 2.4 and 1.7 for high, moderate and low consumers, respectively)
followed by sports drinks for high and moderate consumers (2.1, 1.6) and diet squash for high consumers
(1.2). Demand by low consumers for regular and diet soft drinks, juices & nectars, and diet and
regular cola is inelastic (0.6 to 0.5); demand by moderate consumers for the same drinks, as well as for juice
drinks with sweetener, is more elastic but still inelastic, ranging from 0.8 to 0.9.
We first simula