Understanding the rural and urban household saving rise in China

• Reasons for the rising rural and urban household saving rates are different in China.
• Rising income is the main contributor to rural household saving rate rise.
• Rising urban saving rates are explained by changes in “returns” to endowments.

This paper analyzes the different factors that drive saving rate rises of both rural and urban households in China. Using data from the Chinese Household Income Project 1995 and 2002, I first show that the whole saving rate distribution shifts up for both rural and urban households. The shift, however, differs between rural and urban households and is heterogeneous across the distribution: while rural saving increased the most at lower percentiles, urban saving experienced a larger shift at higher percentiles. Moreover, decomposition in the saving distribution shows that most of the increase in the rural saving rate is due to rising income. In contrast, only a small portion of the increase in the urban saving rate can be explained by changes in household characteristics including income. The rising urban saving rates are instead explained by changes in quantile regression coefficients over time, especially at the top of the saving distribution.