Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of China’s urban segregation caused by hukou restrictions on food consumption. Design/methodology/approach: Based on the 2007–2009 Urban Household Survey data from six China provinces conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics of China, the authors adopt a propensity score matching (PSM) method to correct for potential selection bias. A Rosenbaum bounds test is applied to evaluate the sensitivity of the PSM results to unobserved variables. Findings: The results show that holding rural hukou (RHs) reduces the consumption of livestock products and vegetables and fruit by 8.8 and 4.8 percent, respectively. The status of hukou does not affect the consumption of grain and edible oil. Hukou impacts on food consumption are heterogeneous across income levels, with low-income and middle-income households more vulnerable to urban segregation and hukou discriminations. A stronger motivation for precautionary saving and higher welfare expenditures that not compensated by social security lead to the lower food consumption by migrant households with RHs. Originality/value: This paper advances the research frontier by investigating the impacts of hukou system on the structure of food consumption, which accurately reflects the household welfare.

China is undergoing a rapid dietary transition as well as a changing income distribution. In this paper, we examine the impacts of income heterogeneity on the prediction of food consumption using a dataset that covered 22,210 urban households in China’s 6 provinces. The two-stage Exact Affine Stone Index Implicit Marshallian Demand System (EASI demand system) model, which deals with the problem of censoring and endogeneity, is applied to estimate demand elasticity across income strata. Additionally, a dynamic simulation method considering income heterogeneity is conducted to predict future food consumption trends. The results reveal that income elasticity follows a decreasing trend with income growth. Furthermore, the results show that the consumption of major food items in the 15th period will increase by 7.9% to 42.0% over the base period. The growth potential of low-income groups is significantly higher than that of middle- and high-income groups. However, the prediction results may be overestimated if the differences in consumer behavior across income groups and the dynamic simulation procedure are not taken into account. Our study indicates that the consumption features of different income groups need to be included in food consumption forecasts. Moreover, the government should formulate food policies for different income groups to promote a sustainable food system transformation.

China’s population is showing the characteristics of “fewer children” and “aging”, which will have a long-term and far-reaching impact on the food and nutritional needs of China and the world. In this paper, adult equivalent scale (AES) variables representing the household population structure were introduced into the energy intake model to quantify the impact of population structure changes on energy intake and reveal the characteristics of energy intake changes in the life cycle of Chinese residents. It is found that the change in the population structure has a significant impact on the energy intake of urban households in China, and the elasticity is 0.446. The energy intake of Chinese elderly over the age of 60 shows a trend of first increasing and then decreasing, especially after the age of 65, which indicates that the aging will promote a decline in food consumption in China. The energy intake of 1–10-year-old children, 22–30 year old, and 40–45 year old women all showed a change of first a decrease and then an increase, which may be related to parents’ care for young children and women with children’s management of body size. The average household size expressed by the adult equivalent scales of energy consumption is 2.341, which is smaller than the 3.052 calculated by the population number. The conclusion indicates that the prediction of the food and nutritional demand should be adjusted according to the changes and differences in accordance with the intensification of “fewer children” and “aging”, as well as the life cycle changes in residents’ energy intake, which is conducive to the formulation of food and nutrition security policies.