Powering Up China: Income Distributions and Residential Electricity Consumption
- (pp. 575-80)
Abstract
Current forecasts suggest that the vast majority of growth in energy demand will come from the developing world, and that China will play a major part in that growth. This paper presents evidence suggesting that the shape of the income distribution, which is typically omitted from forecasting models, plays a major role in driving household acquisition of energy-using durable goods in rural China. We use province-level data for rural households to show that the share of the population living above the poverty line is an important determinant of household appliance holdings even controlling for average household income.Citation
Auffhammer, Maximilian, and Catherine D. Wolfram. 2014. "Powering Up China: Income Distributions and Residential Electricity Consumption." American Economic Review, 104 (5): 575-80. DOI: 10.1257/aer.104.5.575Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- D31 Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions
- L94 Electric Utilities
- O13 Economic Development: Agriculture; Natural Resources; Energy; Environment; Other Primary Products
- P28 Socialist Systems and Transitional Economies: Natural Resources; Energy; Environment
- Q41 Energy: Demand and Supply; Prices
- Q47 Energy Forecasting
- Q48 Energy: Government Policy