DEMAND FOR FOOD QUANTITY AND QUALITY IN CHINA

Fred Gale and Kuo Huang

No 7252, Economic Research Report from United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service

Abstract: As their incomes rise, Chinese consumers are changing their diets and demanding greater quality, convenience, and safety in food. Food expenditures grow faster than quantities purchased as income rises, suggesting that consumers with higher incomes purchase more expensive foods. The top-earning Chinese households appear to have reached a point where the income elasticity of demand for quantity of most foods is near zero. China’s food market is becoming segmented. The demand for quality by high-income households has fueled recent growth in modern food retail and sales of premium-priced food and beverage products. Food expenditures and incomes have grown much more slowly for rural and low-income urban households.

Keywords: Food; Consumption/Nutrition/Food; Safety (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40
Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (54)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/7252/files/er070032.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:uersrr:7252

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.7252

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economic Research Report from United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().