Impact of changing income distribution on fluid milk consumption in urban China

作者：Wenbo Zhu, Yongfu Chen, Zhihao Zheng, Zhao Jing, Guojing Li, Wei Si · 发表于：China Agricultural Economic Review · 年份：2020 · DOI：10.1108/caer-09-2019-0162 · 被引用次数：9 · 研究领域：Economics of Agriculture and Food Markets、Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics、Income, Poverty, and Inequality

Purpose China has experienced a fast economic growth and shown a significant rise in income inequality in the past decades. During the same period, fluid milk consumption in urban areas has rapidly expanded. The objective of this paper is to analyze and simulate the influence of income distribution changes on fluid milk consumption of households in urban China. Design/methodology/approach This study applies an inverse hyperbolic sine (IHS) double-hurdle model to modeling at-home fluid milk consumption of households across different income strata based on a sample of 11,861 urban households in five provinces in China, and simulating the impact of changing income distribution, including five income growth patterns, on fluid milk consumption of total households as well as specific household groups. Findings The fluid milk consumption in urban China will continue to increase, with the unconditional income elasticity being 0.334 for the full sample and 0.347, 0.335 and 0.162 for the low-, middle-, and high-income groups, respectively. The simulation results show an evidence that, compared with distribution-neutral and disparity-enlarging income growth patterns, a rising income equality would lead to a more significant increase in fluid milk consumption. And the inequality-reducing income growth pattern has a larger impact on fluid milk consumption of households with seniors and no children, as well as households having no local urban household registration ( hukou ). Practical imp...