I am often asked if the one-child policy is still in force here in China.It is a confusing topic and I know there are lots of exceptions, but China Daily recently released some interesting information about the most recent population census.In 1990 there were 3.92 people in each family in China, on average.That declined to 3.44 people in 2000, and to 3.13 in the most recent census, which ended in early 2006.This seems to me to be a pretty dramatic decline in family size in such a short time.
People under the age of 14 represented 19.55% of the population in 2006, down from 22.89% six years earlier.The share of the population of people over the age of 65 rose from 6.96% to 9.10%.
Urban population in 2006 was 44.8% of the total population, compared to 36.1% in 2000.A rough back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that this implies net migration over the last six years if about 110-120 million, although I am sure this is understated, since many rural migrants are living illegally in the cities and are probably still listed as residing in their home towns – and although this should have been captured in the census, I am not sure illegal migrant workers are likely to want to talk to guys taking notes..
By the way, in another article today, the China Daily says, in reporting about the recently released (Thursday) annual report on social development by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences: “The Engel Index, a measure of what percentage of a person's income goes into food, was 35.8 percent for urban residents, 1.9 percent less than in 2002. For rural residents, it was 43 percent, 3.2 percent less than in 2002.”
Adding all this stuff together, I get that food spending comprises 40% of total income on average for the country.I am not sure how you calculate the food component of the CPI basket from this, but I would guess that since total expenditures are less than 100% of total income, the food component of the CPI basket should be higher than 40%. I cannot reconcile this number with the claim that food comprises 33% of the CPI basket.As an aside the report says that 66.5% of urban respondents and 57.6% of rural respondents listed rising prices as the most worrying social issue of 2007.
Michael Pettis is a professor at Peking University's Guanghua School of Management, where he specializes in Chinese financial markets. He has also taught, from 2002 to 2004, at Tsinghua University’s School of Economics and Management and, from 1992 to 2001, at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business. He is a member of the board of directors of ABC-CA Fund Management Co., a Sino-French joint venture based in Shanghai.
Pettis has worked on Wall Street in trading, capital markets, and corporate finance since 1987, when he joined the Sovereign Debt trading team at Manufacturers Hanover (now JP Morgan). Most recently, from 1996 to 2001, Pettis worked at Bear Stearns, where he was Managing Director-Principal heading the Latin American Capital Markets and the Liability Management groups. He has also worked as a partner in a merchant banking boutique that specialized in securitizing Latin American assets and at Credit Suisse First Boston, where he headed the emerging markets trading team. Besides trading and capital markets, Pettis has been involved in sovereign advisory work, including for the Mexican government on the privatization of its banking system, the Republic of Macedonia on the restructuring of its international bank debt, and the South Korean Ministry of Finance on the restructuring of the country’s commercial bank debt.
Pettis is a member of the Institute of Latin American Studies Advisory Board at Columbia University as well as the Dean’s Advisory Board at the School of Public and International Affairs. He is the author of several books, including The Volatility Machine: Emerging Economies and the Threat of Financial Collapse (Oxford University Press, 2001). He received an MBA in Finance in 1984 and an MIA in Development Economics in 1981, both from Columbia University.
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December, 2007
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