Study On The Effects Of Urbanization On The Upgrading Of Rural Residents' Consumption Structure In China

Urbanization is a historical task of China's modernization,and it is also an important weapon to expand domestic demand.In the backg gound of weak external demand and overcapacity,it is urgent for us to promote the New-Type Urbanization Strategy actively,which is helpful to excavate enormous consumption potential of our country.Considering that the maximum consumption potential of our country is in the group of rural residents and urbanization of population is in favor of improving the consumption structure of rural residents and expanding domestic demand,we say that the urbanization of population is the core task of the New-Type Urbanization Strategy.For that reason,studying the influence of population urbanization on rural residents' consumption structure is very significant.Firstly,we reviewed and commented the related literature on urbanization and consumption at home and abroad.After clarifying the meaning andclassification criteria of population urbanization and consumption structure,we found that population urbanization may affect the consumption structure by four paths:income effect,demonstration effect,institutional guarantee effect and the upgrading of industrial structure effect.We also analyzed the current situation and features of population urbanization and rural residents' consumption structure,andexplored the correlation between them at the same time,finding that there is a strong correlation between the population urbanization and the rural residents' consumption structure.Secondly,we established an empirical model to analyze the effect on rural residents' consumption structure of population urbanization based on the panel data from 2005 to 2013.The empirical results show that population urbanization has a significant positive effect on the upgrading of rural residents' consumption structure,but there are regional differences.In the western region,population urbanization has the greatesteffect on rural residents' consumption structure,then the middle region,and the east region is in the last.The empirical results also show that population urbanization has different effects on different consumption items,for instance,population urbanization has a positive effect on consuming in clothing,housing,household equipment,health care,communication and traffic etc,among which the effect on housing,household equipment,health care,communication and traffic is larger than others;whileits effect on food expenditure,education and entertainment expenses is negative.So we conclude that the consumption structure of rural residents has being changed from survival consumption to development consumption.Lastly,in order to make full use of the role of population urbanization to promote the consumption structure of rural residents,we put forward some suggestions based on the research results as follows:activelyadvance the New-Type Urbanizationand constantly improve the level of urbanization;accuratelygrasp the consumption hot spots based on the regional characteristics.