Using factor analysis for expenditure patterns of Peshmerga households in Erbil Governorate, with focus on food Items

الملخص EN

Peshmerga is a military force in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

This study elaborates on the expenditures items of a sample of 385 Peshmerga households throughout two major sets of variables.

The first set consists of 22 general expenditure patterns (variables) per month such as salary, years of service, military ranks, type of healthcare; public sector or private sector, transportation expenses in Iraqi Dinars, children education expenses, and so forth.

And the second set consists of 22 food items (variables); bread expenses, meat expenses, sugar expenses...

etc.

For each of either set, the researcher conducted an exploratory factor analysis by adopting the method of Principal Component Analysis to reduce the number of variables to a fewer number of components.

As a result, 8 components extracted from the first set with the total variance explained the ratio of % 64.085, and 6 components from the second set with the total variance explained of %52.856.