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The overall goal of our paper is to understand the impact that irrigation in China has had on grain production and incomes, in general, and income and poverty alleviation in poor areas, in particular. The paper seeks to meet three objectives. First, we describe the relationship among irrigation status, yields and household crop revenue. Second, we seek to understand the magnitude and nature of the effect that irrigation has on yields and crop revenue. Finally, we seek to understand the impact that irrigation has on incomes in poor areas. Our analysis shows that irrigation contributes to increases in yields for almost all crops and in income for farmers in all areas. The importance of crop income in poor areas and the strong relationship between crop revenue and irrigation provides evidence of the importance of irrigation in past and future poverty alleviation in China. We also show that in the majority of the villages that invested in new irrigation, returns are positive even after accounting for increases in capital and production costs.

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This paper provides an overview and synthesis of China's irrigation water pricing policies. The history of China's agricultural water policies is reviewed in order to provide a context and background for discussions of current policy issues. The methods on how agricultural water prices are determined, applied and collected, are described. The paper concludes by discussing a series of issues that confound further reform and the effectiveness of pricing policies in promoting water conservation and farmers' capacity to adapt to higher water prices.

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Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to analyze the income sensitivity of food consumption in Beijing, China, using an original household survey data set collected by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Design/methodology/approach -An Engel curve model is fit to the household data of nine food categories and 35 food items, and both conditional and unconditional expenditure elasticities of demand are calculated and reported for the nine food groups and the 35 food items. Findings -Working's model fits the data well, and the elasticity estimates are all reasonable in terms of economic theory, size and signs. The results indicate a relative large range in income sensitivity among the nine food groups and 35 food items in response to changes in household food expenditure levels. Originality/value -The research analyzes unique and rich urban household survey data collected by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and is the most comprehensive analysis to date in terms of the number of food items studied for which expenditure elasticities are calculated. These elasticities may be used to study household food consumption patterns, to calculate caloric or nutrient elasticities, to study obesity in China, to study policy prescriptions in terms of taxes and subsidies on food, to infer welfare and affluence, and may be used as inputs into econometric models such as those used by the World Bank, IFPRI, and others.