Look at young people's consumption from the perspective of the times

2021-11-03

Recently, the contemporary youth consumption report issued by an organization shows that there are 175 million post-90s in China, of which only 13.4% have no debt, while 86.6% of the post-90s have been exposed to credit products, and leading consumption has become a daily problem. At the same time, more than 60% of the post-90s use consumer loans to improve their quality of life and leisure, mainly involving the "lazy economy", pet economy, health boom, beauty economy and entertainment industry. The word "debt" can easily lead to negative associations. In addition, young people who have little material accumulation spend their borrowed money in some so-called "non just needed" categories, which seems to strengthen a certain moral judgment: young people are falling into the trap of consumerism, in which there are potential risks. Consumption is consumption, which is a normal economic behavior. However, once the word "doctrine" is added, it seems to have the characteristics of value judgment, and the emotional color has changed. However, such a narrative model still has more concepts than descriptions, and labels are greater than analysis, which may not be of much help to understand young people and then explain this phenomenon. We should not look at economic phenomena in a static framework. Take "rigid demand" as an example. At a time when the Engel coefficient, which indicates the proportion of residents' food expenditure in total consumption expenditure, is declining, if we still understand "rigid demand" as basic food and clothing, we will certainly feel that young people are falling into a consumption trap. However, "rigid demand" itself is a dynamic concept with age and regional differentiation. The definition of "rigid demand" is completely different in different times. How can contemporary young people not understand that they regard health preservation and entertainment as necessities of life from the starting point of great material enrichment? For lending, there is no need to apply the pre-modern template of "living beyond one's means". The generalization of lending is a phenomenon naturally derived from the development of modern finance. Where finance exists, of course, there will be risks, but the risks are related to the overall credit level of society and have nothing to do with what young people consume. Young people's courage to borrow and face risks comes from their judgment of their own ability and social prospects. The "this generation" of young people who grow up in the market economy environment also have their own economic rationality. Some indicators also show that young people's economic literacy is not so bad. Another organization once released a report on the debt situation of Chinese young people, which showed that half of young people only use credit as short-term capital turnover and pay it off in the same month. It can be seen that young people may be vain and impulsive in consumption, but they are not brainless. How to look at the consumption behavior of young people is actually how to look at the trend of economic development. Worries often come from unfamiliar social experience in the past few decades. Sometimes it is difficult to interpret the consumption picture of contemporary young people, but this is a normal situation in late developing countries. The development rate of "space-time compression" will constantly create all kinds of novel phenomena. For new phenomena, we might as well look at them with a dynamic and open mind. Of course, this is not to please young people. The course of China's reform and opening up for decades shows that people's freedom of choice in economy is one of the minimum symbols of social development. From this perspective, respecting the lifestyle of young people is the basic logic of respecting the market economy. (outlook new era)

Edit:Yuanqi Tang    Responsible editor:Xiao Yu

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