Study On The Actual Consumption Rate Of Chinese Residents At The Present Stage

The current official statistics show that the proportion of China’s household consumption expenditure in the gross domestic product of the expenditure method(that is household consumption rate)is far lower than the general level of all kinds of economies in the world.However,there seems to be a contradiction between the actual situation of the real consumer market and such a serious "low" household consumption rate.Therefore,this paper raises such a question:is the real Chinese household consumption rate really the same as the official statistics of our country?This is a fundamental issue worthy of attention in discussing the current situation of China’s household consumption and deciding the decisions of investment and consumption.The study on this issue is obviously of great significance in both academic and practical economic work.Up to now,the research is basically based on the fact that the officially published data of household consumption rate counts all the actual household consumption,the statistical caliber and calculation method are accurate,and the statistical caliber is internationally comparable.This paper is skeptical about this.According to the latest international statistical standard,System of National Account 2008,the user cost method is used to re-estimate the virtual rent of the owner-occupied housing services of urban residents in China,the concept of government physical social transfer is introduced to correct the residents’ service consumption expenditure,the consumption scale of public funds and the scale of private consumption of public cars in China are estimated.Through these estimates and revisions,this paper finds that China’s official statistics underestimate the household consumption rate in our country to a certain extent.The revised household consumption rate is 12 to 15 percentage points higher than the current official statistics.Therefore,it may not be true that the Chinese household consumption rate based on the official consumption data is far lower than the average level of the upper middle income economies.The household consumption rate at the existing residents’ income level has not been seriously low.However,compared with the average level of other economies such as the world and the high-income countries,the revised consumption rate of Chinese residents is still low,one of the important reasons for the low proportion of household consumption to GDP may be the low proportion of residents’disposable income to GDP.On the basis,this paper recalculates the consumption propensity of Chinese residents.It is considered that the residents’ disposable income must be increased to improve the driving effect of residents’consumption on economic growth.