TY  - JOUR
AU  - Yang, Dennis Tao
AU  - Zhang, Junsen
AU  - Zhou, Shaojie
TI  - Why Are Saving Rates so High in China?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 16771
PY  - 2011
Y2  - February 2011
DO  - 10.3386/w16771
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w16771
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w16771.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Dennis Tao Yang
Darden School of Business
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903
E-Mail: YangD@darden.virginia.edu

Junsen Zhang
Department of Economics
Chinese University of Hong Kong
Shatin, N.T.
Hong Kong
E-Mail: jszhang@cuhk.edu.hk

Shaojie Zhou
Tsinghua University
Beijing 100084
China
E-Mail: zhoushaojie@tsinghua.edu.cn
M1  - published as Dennis Tao Yang, Junsen Zhang, Shaojie Zhou. "Why Are Saving Rates So High in China?," in Joseph P. H. Fan and Randall Morck, editors, "Capitalizing China" University of Chicago Press (2013)

M3  - presented at "Capitalizing China Conference", December 15-16, 2009
AB  - In this paper, we define "The Chinese Saving Puzzle" as the persistently high national saving rate at 34-53 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in the past three decades and a surge in the saving rate by 11 percentage points from 2000-2008. Using data from the Flow of Funds Accounts (FFA) and Urban Household Surveys (UHS) supplemented by the findings from existing studies, we analyze the sources and causes of China's high and rising saving rates in the government, corporate, and household sectors. Although the causes of China's high saving are complex, we suggest that the evolving economic, demographic, and policy trends in the internal and external environments of the Chinese economy will likely lead to a decline in national saving in the foreseeable future.
ER  -