抄録
This paper estimated household demand system in rural China and it's structural change using a two-stage LA/AIDS and pooled time-series and regional cross-section data from the Rural Household Surveys for 1985-98.
From our estimated results, we found that expenditure and own-price elasticities for food group have greatly fallen from 1.0, -1.3 in 1985-92 to 0.7, -0.6 in 1993-98, while for other non-food groups such as clothing, housing, articles for daily use, education, and other expenditures, have become more elastic in the same periods. Within the food group, staple grain and vegetables have the smallest expenditure elasticities of 0.2 and 0.6, while meat & eggs, other foods, cooking oil, liquor and fish have larger elasticities in a range of 1.6-2.3 in 1985-92, Although these individual fords' expenditure elasticities, as well as their price elasticities, dropped large in 1993-98, some foods, such as liquor, meat & eggs, fish keep their expenditure elasticities in range of 1.1-1.6.
Compared these results with urban household, it can de found that, expenditure elasticity's gap between grain, vegetables and other foods with animal origin are larger, and demands for almost commodities, except housing, are more income elastic in the rural households. This means that, potential market in the rural is not only wide, but also very deep. Only income permit, demands for foods with animal origin and other industrial commodities in the rural will increase more rapidly than in urban.
