Household Food Demand in Rural China


Book Description

Abstract: This paper explores rural household food consumption behaviour in China using a large household data set from Jilin Province. Data are classified into four main food groups--grain, vegetable products, animal products and other foods. A household food demand system, incorporating four household characteristics, is estimated using an LA-AIDS model, assuming a three-stage budgeting procedure. Expenditure elasticities for a range of food groups are estimated, with a particular focus on animal products. The inclusion of household characteristics did not have a big impact on the elasticity values in any of the three stages of the budgeting process. The total expenditure elasticity for grain (stage II) was 0.64, suggesting substantial future growth in household demand for fine grains such as rice and wheat, as per capita incomes continue to grow in rural areas. The highest conditional and total expenditure elasticity values were for the animal products (stage II) group, 1.22 and 0.76 respe




Food Demand in Rural China


Book Description

Abstract: With an ever-growing economy, China has poised as an important and potentially huge market for many exporters of food products in the world. China's access into the World Trade Organization (WTO) is further accelerating its integration into the world market, with its slow-nurturing agricultural sector not left behind. The future of food production, consumption, and supply in the rural sectors and the related welfare issues for farmers and consumers in China, and in other parts of the world alike, have been heatedly debated. This study sets out to gain a credible knowledge of food consumption behavior in rural China, by estimating a consistent complete food demand system from recent rural household survey (RHS) data provided by China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), under the framework of agricultural household models. First, we develop a micro-theoretical framework for a typical Chinese rural household as a producer as well as consumer facing markets with failures. Secondly, utility maximizing behavior and comparative statics are analyzed to derive guidelines for empirical demand analyses as well as detailed methodology. Finally, the RHS data for Jiangsu, Heilongjiang, and Henan provinces in 1995 and 2001 are used to estimate the proposed quadratic almost ideal demand system (QAIDS). We find the use of effective prices takes into account the dual role of a rural household as a producer and a consumer and helps reduce the problem of positive own price elasticities in demand estimation. We also find that transaction costs play important roles in deciding consumption patterns. For a rural household facing lower transaction costs, its consumptions on food products are found to be much more responsive to exogenous price and income changes. Using a simplified approach of demand analysis under our conceptual framework, we find from QAIDS estimation that food products consumed at home, and clothing and bedding are necessities, while food away from home, durable goods, and housing and utilities are luxuries. We also find the income elasticities of grain and vegetables decreased from 1995 to 2001 and those for meat and aquatic products increased at the same time, which agrees with the experience of developing countries.




Poverty, Food Insecurity and Commercialization in Rural China


Book Description

This study, first published in 1993, analyses the relationship among poverty, food insecurity and commercialization in rural China by employing agricultural household models. Data are derived from a 10,000 household subsample of the annual rural household consumption and expenditure survey.




China's Economy


Book Description

Containing ten quality chapters on China''s rural reforms and agricultural development, this first volume from the Series on Developing China: Translated Research from China emphasizes the importance of countryside, agriculture and the role of peasants in China''s economy. While the Chinese revolution has traveled a path of OC encircling the cities from the rural areasOCO, Chinese reforms were likewise started in promoting the household contract responsibility system in the rural areas OCo the majority of its population living in the countryside makes it the focus of the reforms. Such structural issues that readjustment of interests entailed as urban-rural divide and poor-rich gap are closely related to the rural reform. For this, a rural study centered on the three rural issues (agriculture, rural areas and peasants), or peasantography, is actually an academic OC gold mineOCO, which contains the richest possibilities for Chinese social science to contribute to the world. The above mentioned chapters cover an extensive range of issues in rural reform and agricultural development in China, including property right, food trade structure, the Township and Village Enterprises, non-agricultural employment, the mobility of labor force, land distribution, taxation and saving behavior. The research approach ranges from a macro- to microeconomics level, while in terms of research methodology, property theory, game model and quantitative economics are used, in combination with historiography and empirical case studies. Sample Chapter(s). Chapter 1: Academic Inquiries into the Chinese Success Story (116 KB). Contents: Academic Inquiries into the OC Chinese Success StoryOCO (Z-L Deng); Gender Inequality in the Land Tenure System of Rural China (L Zhu); The Allocation of Decision-Making Power and Changes in the Decision-Making Style: Systematic Thoughts on China''s Rural Problems (S-G Zhang & N Zhao); Farmers'' Tax Burden in Rural China: A Political Economy Analysis (R Tao et al.); Effects of Labor Out-Migration and Income Growth and Inequality in Rural China (S Li); Grain versus Food: A Hidden Issue in China''s Food Policy Debate (F Lu); Saving Behavior in a Transition Economy: An Empirical Case Study of Rural China (G-H Wan et al.); Township Enterprises and Their Interest Distribution in Reform: A Three-Player Game Model (R-Z Ke); Rural Interregional Inequality and Off-Farm Employment in China (P Zhang); Food Demand and Nutritional Elasticity in Poor Rural Areas of China (J-W Zhang & F Cai); Reform in China''s Rural Areas: The Changes in the Relationship between the State and Land Ownership OCo A Retrospect on the Changes in Economic Institutions (Q-R Zhou). Readership: Economists, political scientists, sociologists, advanced undergraduates and graduate students interested in China''s economy, rural areas and society."




The Demand for Food Quality in Rural China


Book Description

Many studies of food demand do not use actual prices but unit values, obtained by dividing expenditures by the quantity consumed. This can bias empirical analyses because unit values are not exogenous market prices; they reflect household food quality choices within each food category. This article develops a framework for assessing the resulting bias in income and price elasticities of demand and applies the framework to data for rural China. Empirical results indicate that households in rural China tend to consume higher-quality food as income increases, with a greater sensitivity to income for basic foods than for luxury foods.




The Demand for Food Quality in Rural China


Book Description

Many studies of food demand do not use actual prices but unit values, obtained by dividing expenditures by the quantity consumed. This can bias empirical analyses because unit values are not exogenous market prices; they reflect household food quality choices within each food category. This article develops a framework for assessing the resulting bias in income and price elasticities of demand and applies the framework to data for rural China. Empirical results indicate that households in rural China tend to consume higher-quality food as income increases, with a greater sensitivity to income for basic foods than for luxury foods.




Post-harvest losses in rural-urban value chains: Evidence from Ethiopia


Book Description

We study post-harvest losses (PHL) in important and rapidly growing rural-urban value chains in Ethiopia. We analyze self-reported PHL from different value chain agents – farmers, wholesale traders, processors, and retailers – based on unique large-scale data sets for two major commercial commodities, the storable staple teff and the perishable liquid milk. PHL in the most prevalent value chain pathways for teff and milk amount to between 2.2 and 3.3 percent and 2.1 and 4.3 percent of total produced quantities, respectively. We complement these findings with primary data from urban food retailers for more than 4,000 commodities. Estimates of PHL from this research overall are found to be significantly lower than is commonly assumed. We further find that the emerging modern retail sector in Ethiopia is characterized by half the level of PHL than are observed in the traditional retail sector. This is likely due to more stringent quality requirements at procurement, sales of more packaged – and therefore better protected – commodities, and better refrigeration, storage, and sales facilities. The further expected expansion of modern retail in these settings should likely lead to a lowering of PHL in food value chains, at least at the retail level.







Agricultural Market Liberalization and Household Food Security in Rural China


Book Description

In the 1990s, prior to its accession to the World Trade Organization, China dramatically reduced market distortions in agriculture. We use a panel of 6,770 rural households from 1989 to 2000 to ask whether agricultural market liberalization affected rural household food security as measured by the share of calories from non-staples. Given that not all households may be able to take advantage of new market opportunities, we focus on the distributional effect of market liberalization. Unlike most previous research on the effects of liberalization, we consider the effects of liberalization on both farm and off-farm income. We find that liberalization primarily improves household food security by increasing off-farm income, and the effects vary greatly by initial food security status and producer types. While many households benefit from liberalization, some food-insecure households producing import-competing products have lower food security as a result of agricultural market liberalization.




Commercialization of Food Consumption in Rural China


Book Description

Rural households in China have traditionally consumed food mostly grown on their own farms. While they continue to rely on self-produced grains, vegetables, meats, and eggs for a large portion of their diet, rural households are now purchasing more of their food as they enter the mainstream of the Chinese economy. Cash purchases of food by rural Chinese households increased 7.4 percent per year from 1994 to 2003. Consumption has shifted from self-produced to purchased food at a rate faster than can be explained by income growth or changes in other household characteristics. The move away from self-produced food is associated with lower consumption of staple grains, the most important self-produced food in rural Chinese diets. Food consumed away from home is one of the fastest growing categories of rural household expenditures, doubling in budget share from 1995 to 2001. Commercialization of food consumption is diversifying Chinese diets, broadening food markets, and creating new opportunities for retailers and product distributors.