Abstract: To investigate the development trend of revenue-expenditure structure of rural residents, revenue and expenditure data during thirty years of the reform and opening-up in China were collected. Linear regression was used to analyze the development trend, hierarchical cluster was conducted to reveal the distribution characteristics and hierarchical partitioning was innovatively used to quantify the relationship between revenue and expenditure. The results showed that revenue-expenditure structure of rural residents exhibited a four-step linear increasing trend during the thirty years, and adjusted R² of linear regressions for each step were mostly above 0.9. Distribution characteristics of revenue and expenditure were similar, and the highest level both occurred in seven independent branches, including Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangdong and Fujian. Wage revenue and transferability-property revenue had become the main types of contributing revenue for expenditure structure of rural residents. They respectively explained 22.34%-41.59% and 41.35%-55.45% of variations in all types of expenditure. In conclusion, with characteristics of stages, unevenness, and a trend towards enjoyment type, revenue of Chinese rural residents had a similar development trend with that of expenditure and played an important role in changing expenditure structure. The findings from this study of 30 years’ long term development and methods used in this paper may provide a reference for further studies on rural economy structure and the exploration on the development of rural areas in China.