IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aejmac/v2y2010i1p93-130.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Why Are Saving Rates of Urban Households in China Rising?

Author

Listed:
  • Marcos D. Chamon
  • Eswar S. Prasad

Abstract

From 1995 to 2005, the average urban household savings rate in China rose by 7 percentage points, to about one-quarter of disposable income. Savings rates increased across all demographic groups, and the age profile of savings has an unusual pattern in recent years, with younger and older households having relatively high savings rates. We argue that these patterns are best explained by the rising private burden of expenditures on housing, education, and health care. These effects and precautionary motives may have been amplified by financial underdevelopment, including constraints on borrowing against future income and low returns on financial assets. (JEL D14, E21, O12, O18, P25, P36)

Suggested Citation

  • Marcos D. Chamon & Eswar S. Prasad, 2010. "Why Are Saving Rates of Urban Households in China Rising?," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(1), pages 93-130, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejmac:v:2:y:2010:i:1:p:93-130
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/mac.2.1.93
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/mac.2.1.93
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Angus Deaton & Christina Paxson, 2000. "Growth and Saving Among Individuals and Households," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 82(2), pages 212-225, May.
    2. Nicola Fuchs-Schundeln & Matthias Schundeln, 2005. "Precautionary Savings and Self-Selection - Evidence from the German Reunification "Experiment"," Harvard Institute of Economic Research Working Papers 2069, Harvard - Institute of Economic Research.
    3. Christopher D. Carroll, 1997. "Buffer-Stock Saving and the Life Cycle/Permanent Income Hypothesis," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(1), pages 1-55.
    4. Paxson, Christina, 1996. "Saving and growth: Evidence from micro data," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 255-288, February.
    5. Attanasio, Orazio P & Browning, Martin, 1995. "Consumption over the Life Cycle and over the Business Cycle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(5), pages 1118-1137, December.
    6. Franco Modigliani & Shi Larry Cao, 2004. "The Chinese Saving Puzzle and the Life-Cycle Hypothesis," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 42(1), pages 145-170, March.
    7. Charles Yuji Horioka & Junmin Wan, 2007. "The Determinants of Household Saving in China: A Dynamic Panel Analysis of Provincial Data," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(8), pages 2077-2096, December.
    8. Angus S. Deaton & Christina Paxson, 1994. "Saving, Growth, and Aging in Taiwan," NBER Chapters, in: Studies in the Economics of Aging, pages 331-362, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Angus Deaton, 2005. "Measuring Poverty in a Growing World (or Measuring Growth in a Poor World)," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(1), pages 1-19, February.
    10. Nicola Fuchs-Schündeln, 2008. "The Response of Household Saving to the Large Shock of German Reunification," Working Papers, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College wp2008-21, Center for Retirement Research, revised Dec 2008.
    11. Wooheon Rhee, 2004. "Habit Formation And Precautionary Saving: Evidence From The Korean Household Panel Studies," Journal of Economic Development, Chung-Ang Unviersity, Department of Economics, vol. 29(2), pages 1-19, December.
    12. Karen E. Dynan, 2000. "Habit Formation in Consumer Preferences: Evidence from Panel Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(3), pages 391-406, June.
    13. Carroll, Christopher D. & Weil, David N., 1994. "Saving and growth: a reinterpretation," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 133-192, June.
    14. Keane, Michael P. & Prasad, Eswar S., 2006. "Changes in the structure of earnings during the Polish transition," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(2), pages 389-427, August.
    15. Deaton, Angus, 1991. "Saving and Liquidity Constraints," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(5), pages 1221-1248, September.
    16. Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas & Jonathan A. Parker, 2002. "Consumption Over the Life Cycle," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(1), pages 47-89, January.
    17. Nicola Fuchs-Schündeln & Matthias Schündeln, 2005. "Precautionary Savings and Self-Selection: Evidence from the German Reunification "Experiment" Abstract: We combine particular features of the German civil service with the unique event of Ge," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(3), pages 1085-1120.
    18. Angus Deaton, 2005. "ERRATUM: Measuring Poverty in a Growing World (or Measuring Growth in a Poor World)," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(2), pages 395-395, May.
    19. Nicola Fuchs-Schundeln, 2008. "The Response of Household Saving to the Large Shock of German Reunification," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(5), pages 1798-1828, December.
    20. McKenzie, David J., 2006. "Precautionary saving and consumption growth in Taiwan," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 84-101.
    21. Meng, Xin, 2003. "Unemployment, consumption smoothing, and precautionary saving in urban China," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 465-485, September.
    22. Olivier Blanchard & Francesco Giavazzi, 2006. "Rebalancing Growth in China: A Three‐Handed Approach," China & World Economy, Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, vol. 14(4), pages 1-20, August.
    23. Tullio Jappelli & Marco Pagano, 1994. "Saving, Growth, and Liquidity Constraints," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(1), pages 83-109.
    24. Christopher D. Carroll & Byung-Kun Rhee & Changyong Rhee, 1994. "Are There Cultural Effects on Saving? Some Cross-Sectional Evidence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(3), pages 685-699.
    25. Kuijs, Louis, 2006. "How will China's saving-investment balance evolve ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3958, The World Bank.
    26. Aart Kraay, 2000. "Household Saving in China," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 14(3), pages 545-570, September.
    27. Chou, Shin-Yi & Liu, Jin-Tan & Hammitt, James K., 2003. "National Health Insurance and precautionary saving: evidence from Taiwan," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(9-10), pages 1873-1894, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Eswar S. Prasad, 2011. "Rebalancing Growth in Asia," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(1), pages 27-66, April.
    2. Chamon, Marcos & Liu, Kai & Prasad, Eswar, 2013. "Income uncertainty and household savings in China," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 164-177.
    3. Terada-Hagiwara, Akiko, 2009. "Explaining Filipino Households’ Declining Saving Rate," ADB Economics Working Paper Series 178, Asian Development Bank.
    4. Gu, Xinhua & Tam, Pui Sun, 2013. "The saving–growth–inequality triangle in China," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 850-857.
    5. Bussière, Matthieu & Kalantzis, Yannick & Lafarguette, Romain & Sicular, Terry, 2013. "Understanding household savings in China: the role of the housing market and borrowing constraints," MPRA Paper 44611, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Gu, Xinhua & Tam, Pui Sun & Li, Guoqiang & Zhao, Qingbin, 2020. "An alternative explanation for high saving in China: Rising inequality," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 1082-1094.
    7. Orazio P. Attanasio & Guglielmo Weber, 2010. "Consumption and Saving: Models of Intertemporal Allocation and Their Implications for Public Policy," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(3), pages 693-751, September.
    8. Angus Deaton, 2010. "Understanding the Mechanisms of Economic Development," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 24(3), pages 3-16, Summer.
    9. Jonathan A. Parker, 2000. "Spendthrift in America? On Two Decades of Decline in the US Saving Rate," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1999, Volume 14, pages 317-387, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Dennis Tao Yang & Junsen Zhang & Shaojie Zhou, 2012. "Why Are Saving Rates So High in China?," NBER Chapters, in: Capitalizing China, pages 249-278, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Horag Choi & Steven Lugauer & Nelson C. Mark, 2017. "Precautionary Saving of Chinese and U.S. Households," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 49(4), pages 635-661, June.
    12. Julian Thimme, 2017. "Intertemporal Substitution In Consumption: A Literature Review," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(1), pages 226-257, February.
    13. Jody Overland & Christopher D. Carroll & David N. Weil, 2000. "Saving and Growth with Habit Formation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(3), pages 341-355, June.
    14. Martin Browning & Thomas F. Crossley, 2001. "The Life-Cycle Model of Consumption and Saving," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(3), pages 3-22, Summer.
    15. Chang, Xiao & An, Tongliang & Tam, Pui Sun & Gu, Xinhua, 2020. "National savings rate and sectoral income distribution: An empirical look at China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    16. Ismail, Aisha & Rashid, Kashif, 2013. "Determinants of household saving: Cointegrated evidence from Pakistan (1975–2011)," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 524-531.
    17. Erik Hurst & Arthur Kennickell & Annamaria Lusardi & Francisco Torralba, 2005. "Precautionary Savings and the Importance of Business Owners," NBER Working Papers 11731, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. repec:jhu:papers:357 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Bick, Alexander & Choi, Sekyu, 2013. "Revisiting the effect of household size on consumption over the life-cycle," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 37(12), pages 2998-3011.
    20. Bram De Rock & Bart Capéau, 2015. "The implications of household size and children for life-cycle saving," Working Paper Research 286, National Bank of Belgium.
    21. Angus Deaton, 2016. "Measuring and Understanding Behavior, Welfare, and Poverty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(6), pages 1221-1243, June.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O18 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis; Housing; Infrastructure
    • P25 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist and Transition Economies - - - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics
    • P36 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist Institutions and Their Transitions - - - Consumer Economics; Health; Education and Training; Welfare, Income, Wealth, and Poverty

    Lists

    This item is featured on the following reading lists, Wikipedia, or ReplicationWiki pages:
    1. Why Are Saving Rates of Urban Households in China Rising? (AEJ:MA 2010) in ReplicationWiki

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aejmac:v:2:y:2010:i:1:p:93-130. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.