Relational Embeddedness,Pension Insurance And Household Consumption

In the development process of social and economic transformation,consumption problem receives more and more attention.As the researches on economics of consumption,sociology of consumption,consumer psychology and consumption culture rising,the perspectives of consumption researches have been expanded continuously,the new elements also have been continuously added into the research contents.China’s rural area is so special with vast territory and large population,where economic development fall behind relatively,peasants’ survival and development are faced large risks and uncertainty.Especially in the rural area of under-developed region,the supply of pension insurance and other various formal social security systems are seriously deficient,and rural households have strong precautionary saving motivation,which leads to the inhibition of consumption.In the process of discussing the consumption problem of rural residents,existing researches mainly focus on the effect of formal social security system in rural area,but ignore the informal system that Chinese rural residents have depended on for a long time.Beyond all doubt,social relationship network in which mutual benefit,mutual help and trust are embedded play a crucial role in consumption behavior of rural residents.With the help of social relationship network,peasant households can effectively reduce expectation of future uncertainty,then weaken their precautionary saving motivation and promote their consumption.On this basis,this paper introduces informal rural security system of relationship embeddedness and formal security system of pension insurance to study consumption problem of peasant households.Based on embeddedness theory,consumption economy theory,social security theory and system change theory,this paper incorporates relational embeddedness,rural social pension insurance and consumption of peasant households into a uniform analysis framework,deems relational embeddedness as an informal security system and brings it into the formal security system-pension insurance in order to investigate the influence path and mechanism of the two types of systems on consumption of peasant households and explore the action mechanism of relational embeddedness and rural social pension insurance on consumption of peasant households.Besides,relevant topic is deduced and proposed through the mathematical model.On this basis,this paper applies economic society survey data of underdeveloped area and uses instrumental variable methods,propensity score matching,quantile regression and Shapley value decomposition to verify the influence of relational embeddedness and rural social pension insurance on consumption of peasant households from multiple perspectives such as consumption level,consumption structure and consumption diversification.Then,this paper confirms the strategic path to drive Chinese peasant households to consume and the strategic decision-making to improve consumption structure of Chinese peasant households.ConclusionsFirstly,Consumption of Chinese peasant households presents the trend of gross increase and structure optimization,but consumption gap of peasant households is obvious in different regions.Consumption level of peasant households in underdeveloped area should be improved urgently,and the consumption structure also needs to be further optimized.Firstly,as per-capita income level improves,consumption level of peasant households shows an increasing trend and Engel coefficient gradually decreases.Meanwhile,consumption tendency change of peasant households shows a decreasing trend on the whole,but consumption fluctuation is frequent.Secondly,consumption structure of peasant households presents a new change trend.Consumption expenditure of development type and enjoyment type is on the rise,and the consumption expenditure proportion also continuously rises.This indicates consumption structure of peasant households is improving.Finally,although relative consumption gap of peasant households in eastern developed area and western underdeveloped area narrows gradually,the gap of consumption level and consumption structure is still obvious.The consumption proportion of development type and enjoyment type in eastern developed area is significantly higher,and the consumption structure is more excellent.Secondly,relational embeddedness as an informal security system and pension insurance as a formal security system influence consumption of peasant households through weakening uncertain expectation,and both have complex correlation.Theoretical research shows that payment of pension insurance premium reduces uncertainty of future income and thus improves consumption level of peasant households.The further analysis indicates that the higher yield rate of relational embeddedness is,the higher the consumption level of peasant households will be.Meanwhile,when the proportion of wealth used to maintain social relationship network decreases,and yield rate of relational embeddedness increases,consumption level of peasant households will rise greatly.In addition,in the absence of endowment insurance,the higher yield rate of relational embeddedness is,the higher level of household consumption will be,but all are in the low grade.with the pension insurance participation and the level of payment improve,the relational embeddedness will boost consumption level of peasant household to a higher interval,but the increased range decreases gradually.Thirdly,Relational embeddedness has significant and positive influence on total consumption level of peasant households in underdeveloped area,while pension insurance is on the contrary.For the group with low consumption and low income,relational embeddedness as an informal security system contributes to relieving the negative effect of pension insurance as a formal security system on consumption level of peasant households.Firstly,compared with peasant households with high consumption level,marginal utility of relational embeddedness on peasant households with low consumption level will be larger.Participation in pension insurance only has significant negative effect on peasant households with low consumption level,but has no significant influence on peasant households with high consumption level.Thus,for peasant households with low consumption level,relational embeddedness significantly weakens the negative effect of pension insurance participation on consumption level of peasant households.For peasant households with high consumption level,the regulatory effect of relational embeddedness is not obvious.Secondly,influence significance of relational embeddedness on consumption level of peasant households is not interfered by income level.Participation in pension insurance imposes prominent negative effect only on peasant households with low income,but has no significant influence on peasant households with high income.Therefore,for peasant households with low income,relational embeddedness will significantly weaken the negative effect of participation in pension insurance on consumption level of peasant households.Finally,the larger the net amount of income and expenditure of pension insurance is,the higher the consumption level of peasant households will be.Such positive relationship will also be weakened by informal security system-relational embeddedness.Fourthly,Relational embeddedness and pension insurance contribute to peasant households in underdeveloped area to transform to development-type consumption and enjoyment-type consumption from living-type consumption,and contribute to improving consumption structure of peasant households,but the influence degree for peasant households with different age,different income and different consumption level is diverse.Meanwhile,relational embeddedness weakens influential effect of pension insurance on consumption structure of peasant households.Firstly,relational embeddedness has significant promotion effect on development-type and enjoyment-type consumption expenditure and the proportion.Pension insurance participation also significantly reduces the proportion of living-type consumption of peasant households,and increases the proportion of development-type and enjoyment-type consumption and improves consumption structure of peasant households.Relational embeddedness weakens the influence of pension insurance participation on consumption structure of peasant households.This means peasant households’ dependence on relational embeddedness will weaken their dependence on pension insurance.Besides,the influence of relational embeddedness and pension insurance participation on consumption structure of peasant households will show significant differences due to the difference in age and income level and different quantile.Fifthly,Relational embeddedness and pension insurance will significantly facilitate consumption diversification of peasant households in underdeveloped area and improve consumption rationality of peasant households.Relative to informal security system-relational embeddedness,formal security system-pension insurance will better improve consumption structure of peasant households.Firstly,relational embeddedness and pension insurance participation will reduce consumption concentration ratio of peasant households and facilitate their consumption diversification and individuation.Relational embeddedness will weaken the negative effect of pension insurance on consumption concentration ratio of peasant households.Secondly,relatively speaking,pension insurance better improves consumption structure of peasant households.Contribution rate of pension insurance to consumption diversification of peasant households reaches 7.33%,while contribution rate of relational embeddedness is only 0.23%.Finally,the influence of relational embeddedness and pension insurance participation on consumption diversification of peasant households will show significant differences due to the differences in age and income level as well as different quantile.As pension insurance improves gradually,security function of relational embeddedness is gradually weakened.Its promotion effect on consumption diversification will weaken gradually.Main research innovationsFirstly,relational embeddedness is deemed as an informal system and incorporated into the formal system-pension insurance,and the influence of two systems on consumption of peasant households in transitional economic entity.The innovation of research perspective contributes to further unravel “the mystery of low consumption rate of rural area in China”.For transitional economic entity,social security system has complex effects on consumption of peasant households.Since pension insurance and other rural formal social security systems are weak,existing researches mostly focus on formal security system and ignore informal system that Chinese rural residents have depended on for long term in the process of discussing consumption of rural residents.In fact,rural security system more depends on informal system supply represented by family and social relations.Beyond all doubt,social relationship network in which mutual benefit and trust are embedded plays a crucial role for the behavior of rural residents.Thus,if the research on rural consumption fails to combine the two systems,it is hard to explain and analyze “the mystery of low consumption rate of rural area in China”.Secondly,this paper discusses formation mechanism of peasant households’ consumption change from multiple levels such as consumption level,consumption structure and consumption diversification and enriches connotation system of researches on consumption of peasant households.Insufficient consumption demand of Chinese peasant households has been an important issue which perplexes total consumption improvement and sustainable development of national economy.In this stage,consumption problem of peasant households especially in underdeveloped area not just shows low total level,but also presents numerous problems including irrational structure and weak impetus.In view of this,this study is not limited to singe dimension of peasant households’ consumption level,but carries out analysis from multiple levels such as consumption level,consumption structure and consumption diversification,comprehensively reveals consumption of peasant households in underdeveloped area and enriches connotation system of researches on consumption of peasant households.Thirdly,this paper explores influence heterogeneity of formal security system and informal security system on consumption of different groups of peasant households,and reveals demographic characteristics of peasant households’ consumption behavior.For the groups with different income and different age,the uncertainty remission function of pension insurance has differences.Besides,the application and expectation of social relationship network are also different.To reveal demographic characteristic of peasant households’ consumption behavior,this study groups the samples for discussion according to the age and income,differentiates different consumption level for quantile regression and explores influence heterogeneity of pension insurance and relational embeddedness on different groups of peasant households.