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American Economic Review Vol. 104 No. 5 2014

Powering up China: Income Distributions and Residential Electricity Consumption

Maximilian Auffhammer1; Catherine Wolfram2

1 University of California–Berkeley, 207 Giannini Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720-3310 and NBER (e-mail: ) · 2 University of California–Berkeley, Haas School of Business, Berkeley, CA 94720-1900 and NBER (e-mail: )

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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.

DOI
10.1257/aer.104.5.575
Volume
104
Issue
5
Pages
575-580
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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