ANN VEECK TAblE 5.2 Food Expenditures as a proportion of Household Income, Nanjing, 1996 Mean household Percentage of Number in samp Household income food household income (olal-330) ( monthly in rmb)·( monthly in rmb)· spent on/od 750 or below 501 380653 75l-1.000 l,001-1,500 611 l.50l-2000 690 7609 2,001-3,000 811 s,00】 or above 91 12 18 At the time of the survey i rmb= U.Sfo125. SOURCE: Author's survey chance to compare quality and price. Prices are established through negoti- ation by each vendor with each consumer. Paying the "proper price"for food items requires some skill on the part of the consumer, since the price depends on a wide range of factors. These factors can include the season of the year, the time of day, the freshness of the food item, the place of origin of the food item, the weather condition at the time of purchase, the market in which it is sold and the price set by the competition in the immediate vicinity But the most notable characteristic of Nanjing food markets is the amount of time and money that Nanjing consumers spend at these sites. My survey of Nanjing households in 1996 found that the mean amount of time spent food shopping by primary food shoppers was almost six hours a week. In ad dition, although this proportion is expected to decrease in the future with growing incomes and increased sp old spending in Nanjing was allocated the mid i ggos, a full half of househ to food, a figure consistent with the national average. A closer look at these statistics, however, shows that while 52 percent is the average proportion of household budget allocated to food. the percentage spent by individual households varies greatly. Table 5.2 shows how food budgets change with in- come level. As expected, as incomes rise, food expenditures also increase Even more dramatic, however, is the inverse relationship between income level and proportion of income spent on food. The lowest-income house holds spend 77 percent of their budget on food, and the highest-income households only 18 percent. This disparity shows that higher-income indi viduals tend to use their extra income to supplement expenditures other than the familv meal 9. World Resources Institute 1994