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Urbanization is driving the growth of China’s carbon footprint. It’s important to investigate what factors, how and to what extent, affect carbon footprints embedded in various categories of rural and urban households’ consumption.

We employ an environmental extended input-output model to assess and compare the rural-urban household carbon footprints and perform a multivariant regression analysis to identify the varying relationships of the determinants on rural and urban household carbon footprints based on the panel data of Chinese households from 2012 to 2018.

The results show evidence of urbanity density effect on direct carbon footprints and countervailing effect on indirect carbon footprints. The old dependency ratio has no significant effect on rural family emissions but has a significantly negative effect on urban direct and indirect carbon footprints. A higher child dependency ratio is associated with less rural household carbon emissions while the opposite is true for urban households. Taking advantage of recycled fuel saves direct carbon emissions and this green lifestyle benefits urban households more by saving more carbon emissions. There is a positive relationship between consumption structure ratio and direct carbon footprints while a negative relationship with indirect carbon footprints and this impact is less significant for urban households. The higher the price level of water, electricity and fuel, the lower the rural household’s direct carbon footprints. Private car ownership consistently augments household carbon footprints across rural and urban areas.

This paper provides comprehensive findings to understand the relationships between an array of determinants and China’s rural-urban carbon emissions, empowering China’s contribution to the global effort on climate mitigation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the new rural social pension program’s effect on household consumption in rural China.

The paper employs field data in Hebei Province and comprehensively applies the ordinary least squares regression model and the difference-in-difference matching method.

The findings show that participation in the Program may not obviously increase household consumption, rather it significantly inhibits the marginal propensity of young families’ consumption temporarily without an apparent impact on participating households’ consumption.

In addition to maintain the stability of the basic system framework of the new rural social pension program and preserve or increase the value of the fund under the Program, dynamic adjustments to pension levels should be made as and when appropriate.

The study provides a new empirical evidence for the relationship between the new rural social pension program and consumption and gives insight into potential modifications and improvements to the Program.

As an important public infrastructure, broadband has absorbed a large amount of investment in China. However, how and to what extent these investments affect economic and social development is largely unknown. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of broadband infrastructure construction on consumption of rural households, using an exogenous policy shock introduced by the China's “Broadband Countryside” pilot project.

Using the tracking sample data of China Household Financial Survey in 2013 and 2015, this study estimates the effect of broadband construction on rural household consumption and draws causality between them relying on a quasi-natural experiment based on an exogenous policy shock.

The difference-in-difference estimates show that broadband construction has significantly increased rural household consumption by 16.69%. This positive promotion effect is mainly achieved through mobile phone access to the Internet, while penetration of computer crowds out rural household consumption. Further research find that broadband construction has increased rural household consumption related to daily life and high-quality household consumption, but not statistically significant for the latter, and it has not helped to promote the consumption upgrading of rural households.

This study contributes to the understanding of the positive status of broadband infrastructure in economic and social development by analyzing the impact of broadband infrastructure construction on rural household consumption. This study expands the content of consumption to rural households, especially high-quality consumption and consumption upgrading in rural areas, which provides the possibility to further tap the consumption potential of rural market. The study is the first to explore how broadband infrastructure construction affects consumption of rural households using a quasi-natural experiment.

This paper examines the impact and mechanism of China's digital inclusive finance on rural consumption upgrade. First, the impact of the development of digital inclusive finance on the upgrading of rural household consumption structure is to be theoretically analyzed and empirically tested. Secondly, in terms of heterogeneity analysis, it pays attention to the age heterogeneity of users that digital inclusive finance influencing rural residents' developmental consumption upgrade, which is related to the issue of intergenerational “digital gap”. Thirdly, the mechanism of digital inclusive finance in promoting rural consumption upgrade is to be investigated. Finally, how to promote the role of digital inclusive finance in upgrading the structure of rural consumption to a developmental demand level will be showed.

From the perspective of the micro-household, this study is conducted by using the instrumental variable (IV) method, with 2SLS model and IV-Tobit model, based on the matched city-level data of Digital Inclusive Financial Index (DIFI) with the Chinese Household Financial Survey (CHFS). “The relief degree of land surface” is an ideal instrumental variable of digital inclusive finance, for including regional altitude difference and terrain factors of regional area, has theoretical influence on the development of digital inclusive finance, and is not affected by other economic variables.

The conclusions show that the digital inclusive finance plays a significant role in promoting the rural households' developmental consumption, but has no significant effect on the rural households' survival-type consumption and hedonistic consumption. Furthermore, this paper examines the impact and mechanism of China's digital inclusive finance on rural consumption upgrade. First, the impact of the development of digital inclusive finance on the upgrading of rural household consumption structure is to be theoretically analyzed and empirically tested. Secondly, it is discovered that digital inclusive finance is age heterogeneous in promoting the upgrade of consumption structure of rural household, and its effect on the elderly is weaker than that on the young for the intergenerational “digital gap”. Thirdly, these conclusions reveal that the digital inclusive finance does affect the consumption of rural residents through three mechanisms: increasing income and wealth, easing liquidity constraints and facilitating payment methods. Finally, how to promote the role of digital inclusive finance in upgrading the structure of rural consumption to a developmental demand level will be showed.

The current research on the relationship between digital inclusive finance and rural consumption only stays at the level of total rural consumption and has not stressed the structural problems of rural consumption. Can digital inclusive finance promote the upgrade of rural consumption structure? To what level can digital inclusive finance promote the upgrading of rural consumption structure? Therefore, it is of great theoretical value to study the upgrading of rural consumption structure from the micro level. Can the current digital inclusive finance benefit the elderly and help break the vulnerability of the elderly to enjoy finance? In this regard, evidence of heterogeneity remains to be provided.

This paper aims to examine the role of off-farm work in the rural residential energy transition in China.

To guide this empirical work, the authors present a simple farm-household model to explain rural energy consumption. The authors then empirically assess three main mechanisms through which off-farm work can speed up energy transition in rural China using panel data methods.

The study shows that income growth from off-farm work can reduce the consumption of traditional biomass energy and facilitate a shift to commercial energy. The losses of labor available for on-farm production raise the shadow price of non-tradable biomass energy and further dampen the demand for traditional biomass energy. More importantly, the authors find that working in service sectors can significantly promote the consumption of commercial energy by rural households. The sectoral exposure effect indicates that a new working environment may influence rural households' energy preferences and thus accelerate the transition away from traditional biomass energy.

Previous studies focus mainly on the income effect of off-farm work on rural energy consumption. The authors first identify three related but essentially different effects of off-farm work on rural energy transition in China. This study provides new insights into the process of energy consumption transition in rural China.

Population and income are growing rapidly in South Asia, spurring the demand for food in general, and the demand for higher-valued food items in particular. This poses particular food security challenges for densely populated and emerging countries, such as Bangladesh. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the increasing and changing cereal consumption pattern in developing countries using Bangladesh as a case.

Using Bangladesh’s Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2000, 2005a, b data, and applying a two-stage quadratic almost ideal system estimation procedure, the present study separately estimates the expenditure elasticities for rural and urban households for five food items: rice, wheat and rice and wheat products, pulses, fish and vegetables. Second, using the estimated elasticities, projected population and the per capita GDP growth rates, this study projects the consumption of the sampled food items by 2030.

This study demonstrates that in 2030 both rural and urban households in Bangladesh will consume more wheat, pulses and fish, but the urban households will consume less rice compared to the current levels of consumption in 2015.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study on developing countries that examines the evolving food items consumption separately by rural and urban households. Using Bangladesh as a case, this study warns that with rapid urbanization and income growth, developing countries need to supply more wheat, fish and pulses. The provision of the maximum usage of scarce resources, such as arable land, the development and dissemination of improved varieties and the best management practices must be ensured to boost domestic food production in developing countries to cater to the future evolving food consumption.

Given the fact that the income disparity has become extremely severe in rural China, the purpose of this paper is to examine heterogeneity in food consumption among various income classes and to investigate the impact of changes in income distribution patterns on food demand in rural China.

In this study, the authors partition the households into five income classes according to the distribution of household per capita net income. Using household data drawn from the China Health and Nutrition Survey in 2011, a two-stage demand model is applied to estimate a food demand system for each of the income classes. After obtaining the estimated income elasticities of eight studied food groups for each income class, the authors then examine the responsiveness of food demand to the changes in income distribution by means of four scenarios with varying income distribution.

The empirical results indicate that substantial differences in food consumption exist across various income classes. Specifically, the lowest-income households are more sensitive to price and income changes for most studied food groups than the highest-income households are. In general, income responsiveness is higher for meats, aquatic products and dairy products. Based on estimated income elasticities, the projected food consumption under different income distribution patterns shows that changes in income distribution have significant influences on food consumption. In addition, the authors conclude that a more equal distribution of income would be associated with a higher demand for food in rural China.

This paper employs a two-stage demand model to estimate food demand in rural China by income classes. The results imply substantial differences in food demand for various income classes. Therefore, income distribution should be taken into account instead of an average estimation for the population as a whole when investigating food demand in rural China. Given the significant changes in income distribution in rural China, this study provides several important policy implications to alleviate income inequality and poverty, as well as to improve nutrition for lower-income classes.