Research On The Consumption Stratification Of China's Household

Since China's reform and opening-up, our society has been in the process of double transformation, namely, the economic and social transformation. The former refers to the transformation from traditional planned economy to socialist market economy; the latter from agrarian.In such a process, the national productivity has been greatly boosted, the economy sustained steady and rapid growth, people's living standard improved significantly.Meanwhile, the old social distribution pattern has been going through a considerable transformation in that the mobility mechanism of the social class has changed, that is to say, new social classes are born while the new stratification mechanism plays an increasingly important role. Household consumption also witnessed profound transformation in that some differences shown among different social groups in their consumption levels, modes, structures and concepts. The differences, resulting from social development and suggesting social progress, impact favorably on social economical development. However, the corresponding changes between households in terms of their interests'relationship give rise to a series of social problems, which in turn, may foster possible social conflicts.Building a harmonious society is itself a constant process in which we reduce and resolve various social conflicts. Consequently, insightful perception of the characteristics of our nation's development s plus scientific analysis of the causes to those problems that undermine social harmony will promote our understating and solutions to the conflicts and problems in a more positive and active way.Building a consumption stratification system which is compatible to the socialist harmonious society is one among many other factors to promote social harmony. The research on household consumption stratification will help to draw a clearer picture of the consumption of different groups, moreover, to have an overall understanding of the interests relationships among households to coordinate their relationships, to have a better recognize the influence of it on national economy to better satisfy the needs of different groups and, ultimately, to have an extensive and deeper idea of the what we have achieved since reform.To sum up, based on a general introduction to the consumption stratification and its characteristics and primary problems existed in our nation, this dissertation explores the inner mechanism and its nature, its possible impact on social economy in the wake of its future development trend, and proposes suggestions for the construction of socialist harmonious consumption stratification system. We believe the change in China's household consumption stratification is the reasonable result of specific stage economic development and institution change. Despite its unfavorable influence on the construction of a harmonious society to some extent, this change will facilitate the formation of sound consumption stratification in the long run if we take an all-rounded view.The dissertation consists of six chapters excluding introduction and conclusion. The first and the second chapters provide theoretical support. With a review and sorting-out of the basic theories concerning social stratification, it is hold that consumption stratification is, first and foremost, a kind of social stratification, the theory of social stratification is the theoretical base of consumption stratification. Meanwhile, consumption stratification has characteristics of its own. It is put forward consumption stratification should constitute an important part of consumption economics, the research of which is of great economic significance. The highlight of this dissertation is the analysis of formation mechanism of consumption stratification from the perspective of The Theory of Mechanism and the basic objective of such a mechanism is to promote social harmony to solve the problems concerning justice and efficiency, therefore, to improve market mechanism and supervision system.The third chapter offers a multi-perspective analysis of the changes of household consumption stratification over since reform and opening-up and an overview of current stratification, the natures of different consumption groups.The forth chapter explores the leading problems existed in household consumption stratification and their causes. The problems identified are the high percentage of middle and low rank groups, and some break-ups among different ranks impede the update of consumer products, lack of effective guarantee of basic cost of living allowances for poor households in rural areas, many challenges posed with regard to the housing, Medicare and education consumption of middle and below-middle groups. The household income gap and the contributing factors for the gap account for consumption stratification. Institutionally, the far-from-perfect stratification mechanism should be responsible for the problems in consumption stratification.The fifth chapter probes into the household consumption stratification in terms of its regulatory methods and mechanism in other countries with a view to introducing the experience of other nations to solve the problems we have.The sixth chapter discusses the construction of a sound stratification mechanism. In the present stage, to build such a mechanism requires us to balance the economic developments in different regions, in both rural and urban areas, to accommodate the interest of different groups, build an extensive and social security system to ensure the basic living condition of low-income groups to enjoy the fruits of modern civilization, intensify our efforts in the income supervision and regulation mechanism and housing and education and Medicare, improve job creation while reduce the number of poverty-stricken residents. The innovation of the* dissertation is as following: first, approach the consumption problems and discuss the institution from the perspective of building a harmonious society. The dissertation studies the formation mechanism and the changes of stratification with an attempt to build a fair, sound and dynamic formation mechanism to solve the problems concerned and to achieve social consumption harmony. Second, consumption stratification was confined to sociological study, but this study is conducted with an economic approach, with particular focus on the economic factors for the formation and consumption stratification and its economic consequences. Therefore, the research of consumption stratification falls into the field of consumption economics, which broaden the scope of the latter. Last, based on the household consumption level and the differences among different groups, residents are grouped into different classification as poverty, life constraints,comfortably well-off, living comparisons and Consumer Pilot.What should be mentioned is that due to the lack of large-scale investigation and the author's limited range of knowledge, together with the complexity of the research on consumption, some problems are far from satisfactorily analyzed, the data quoted should have been more comprehensive, and the pattern needs to be improved. All these and others required further research. Apart from the defects, the overall description of household consumption in china is true to the fact, and the research is of certain theoretical and realistic value. Undoubtedly there are some room for improvement both in the research process and its conclusion. Still, the author intends to offer a few commonplace remarks by way of introduction so that others may come up with valuable opinions.