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

【News Essay】

A few days ago, the "Contemporary Youth Consumption Report" issued by an institution showed that there were 175 million post-90s in the country, of which only 13.4% had no debt, while 86.6% of the post-90s had contact with credit products, and advanced consumption became a daily routine. At the same time, more than 60% of the post-90s will use consumer loans to improve the quality of life and leisure, mainly involving the "lazy economy", pet economy, health boom, beauty economy and entertainment industry.

The word "debt" can easily make people have negative associations. Coupled with the fact that young people, who already have little material accumulation, spend their borrowed money in some so-called "non-rigid" categories, this seems to reinforce a certain moral judgment: young people are falling into the trap of consumerism, in which there are hidden risks.

Consumption is consumption, which is a perfectly normal economic behavior, but once the word "ism" is added, it seems to have the characteristics of value judgment, and the emotional color has also changed. But such a narrative mode is still more conceptual than described, labels are greater than analysis, and it may not be of much help to understand young people and then explain this phenomenon.

Economic phenomena cannot be viewed within a static framework. Taking "just need" as an example, at a time when the Engel coefficient, which marks the proportion of residents' food expenditure in total consumption expenditure, continues to decline, if "just need" is understood as the basic degree of eating and wearing, it will of course feel that young people are falling into a consumption trap.

However, "just need" itself is a dynamic concept with age and regional differentiation, and the definition of "just need" in different eras is completely different. How can contemporary young people stand at the starting point of great material abundance and regard health and entertainment as the necessities of life?

For lending, there is no need to apply the pre-modern template of "eating grain under all helplessness", and the generalization of lending is a natural derivative of modern financial development. Where there is a financial presence, there will of course 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 dare to borrow and face risks directly from the judgment of their own abilities and social prospects. The "current" young people who have grown 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 institution has released a "Report on the Debt Status of Young People in China", showing that half of young people only use credit as short-term capital turnover and pay it off that month. It can be seen that young people may have vanity and impulses in consumption, but they are not brainless.

How to look at the consumption behavior of young people is actually how to look at economic development trends. Concerns often stem from unfamiliarities, and the social experience of the past few decades can sometimes make it difficult to interpret the consumption picture of contemporary young people, but this is a very normal situation in late-developing countries. The rate of development of "space-time compression" will certainly continue to create various novel phenomena.

For new phenomena, it is advisable to 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 the economy is one of the most basic signs of social development. From this point of view, respecting the way of life of young people is respecting the basic logic of the market economy.

(Author: Wang Zimo)

Source: Guangming Daily