Empirical Comparison Of Animal Food Consumption Between Urban And Rural Residents In China

The income both urban and rural residents in China has been increasing greatly since the economic system reform in 1978. Meanwhile, the level and structure of their consumption have kept changing largely, too. But the food expenditure is still the most important component in their daily lives. It means that the Engle's coefficients are still very high. The share of different food consumption in total food expenditure has also changed continuously. Not only the staple food grain but also the animal food food consumption has changed a lot. Analyzing of these major impact factors based on the law of the passed property and amount of animal consumption, we can understand the coming trends of the urban and rural residents in animal food consumption, .measure the degree of variation in the near future, provide recommendations for the development of the livestock industry .It will be valuable for balancing the food supply and demand, and the food safety issues in China as well.This paper uses the panel data of all provinces in Chin except for Congqin and Xizang during 1995 and 2003, establishes systematic models both the urban and rural residents' animal food consumption via LA/AIDS model, analyzes the notability and degree of influence to urban and rural residents in animal food consumption structure, including income level, price factor, household scale, the degree of urbanization, regional and time differences et al. After this, this paper also estimates the expenditure elasticity, self-price elasticity, non-compensated and compensated price elasticity for pork, beef and mutton, poultry meat ,eggs and aquatic.The result shows that the income level, the price of animal food, the household scale, the difference of region, have impacted the demand of animal food food consumption remarkably. The level of urbanization has influenced the rural residents' demand for animal food consumption greatly, too. With the income growth of the residents, they will increase all kinds of animal food consumption but in different extents. The urban residents will increase more poultry and pork consumption, meanwhile the rural residents will increase more pork consumption. Both the urban and rural residents will not consume beef and mutton preferable. With the enlarging of the household scale, urban residents will reduce their pork and eggs consumption, but increase poultry and little beef and button; rural residents will reduce their pork consumption but increase other animal food consumption. With the degree increase of the urbanization, the rural residents will reduce their pork consumption, but increase egg consumption.To take into account of out-of-doors consumption, and apply other experts' research results, this paper re-estimates the results and compares them with the existed conclusions. We find the impact to urban residents is much larger than to rural residents. It indicates that the out-of-doors consumption of urban citizen is more than the rural side.On the groungs of the estimated elasticity , pe capita increment amount of animal food will be enormous in future. Government should take into account the cattle breeding develop highly when adjusting the structure of agriculture,endeavor to enhance the ability of animal food offer and undertake the increasing demand of residents.