Data Sources To examine both qualitative and quantitative changes in rice consumption patterns at the household level, this study relied on the HIES data collected in 2000, 2005, and 2010 (BBS, 2000, 2005, 2010a), which were made available by BBS, the government of Bangladesh. BBS used a two-stage stratified random sampling to ensure greater precision. In the first stage, more than 500 primary sampling units (PSUs) were selected across the country; in the second stage, 10to 20 households were selected randomly per PSU to represent rural, urban, and statistical metropolitan areas. In the 2000 HIES survey, 7,440 households were randomly selected from 6 divisions, 64 districts, and 295 sub districts, out of which 6,316 households were located in rural areas and the rest (1,124) were from urban areas (BBS,2000). In the 2005 HIES, a total of 10,080 households were randomly selected from 6 divisions, 64 districts, and 351 sub districts, out of which 6,400 were located in rural areas and the rest (3,680) were located in urban areas (BBS,2005). Finally, in the 2010 HIES (BBS, 2010a), a total of 12,240households were randomly selected from 7 divisions, 612 PSUs, 64 districts, and381 sub districts, out of which 7,840 were from rural areas and the rest (4,400) were from urban areas. Thus, the present study is based on information collected from 29,760 households, of which 20,556 were from rural areas and the rest(9,204) were from urban areas. To capture the heterogeneity in rice consumption among the sampled households, we divided all sampled households into four expenditure quartiles. The first expenditure quartile consists of the poorest households with the lowest per capita real expenditure on food per day; by contrast, the fourth expenditure quartile consists of the richest households with the highest per capita real expenditure on food per day.Table 1shows that,on average over the years sampled, per capita daily real total food expenditure was nearly Bangladesh taka (BDT)4 14, but it was only BDT 7.58 in the case of the poorest sampled households belonging to the first expenditure quartile, and BDT 23 in the case of the richest sampled households belonging to the fourth expenditure quartile.Table 1shows that the sampled households areevenly distributed in all of the expenditure quartiles. It shows that, although the sampled households in each expenditure quartile are dominated by male household heads that are predominantly located in rural areas, the household heads and spouses belonging to the fourth expenditure quartile are more highly educated than others, and nearly 45% of them live in urban areas. As educated household heads and spouses have more lucrative earning opportunities in then on farm sector, more educated households and spouses tend to be well-off than others. Interestingly,Table 1also shows that more than 50% of the sampled households belong to the third and fourth expenditure quartiles, located in Dhaka and Chittagong divisions. Bangladesh has seven administrative divisions,among which the capital city Dhaka is located in Dhaka division and the largest seaport is located in Chittagong division. These two divisions are relatively more industrialized than other divisions. The incidence of income poverty (headcount rate) also tends to be lower in Chittagong and Dhaka divisions than in other divisions. The findings thus confirm that the richest sampled households that belong to the fourth expenditure quartile are more likely to be highly educated and urban households, a majority of which are located in Dhaka and Chittagong divisions, two of the most industrialized divisions in Bangladesh.