Education Expansion, Family Care And Welfare Of The Elderl

The report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China points out that "Building a strong education nation is a fundamental project for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,and education must be given priority." Since the founding of New China 70 years ago,China’s education has developed rapidly,especially after the reform and opening up,accompanied by the rapid expansion of the education scale and remarkable growth of the social human capital.The improvement of national education plays an important role in promoting economic development and enhancing national competitiveness,while the education as a basic intergenerational investment product in old-age security cannot be ignored as well.In previous studies on family mutual insurance,the intergenerational investment function of education and the role of education development in reshaping family mutual insurance patterns have not received much attention from the academics.The intergenerational investment in education is a temporal exchange of resources,just like sowing seeds and waiting for the harvest,parents invest in their children’s education in the hope that they can get more retirement returns in their old age.However,the effective operation of the "sowingharvesting" mechanism of education investment cannot be achieved without good "soil".China has a tradition of children supporting their parents,and relying on the cultural soil of family mutual insurance,education can maximize its function as an intergenerational investment product.After the reform and opening up of China,the compulsory education policy and the expansion of higher education have been the key points for the continuous expansion of public education,and the overall education level of the nation has been greatly improved.However,at the same time,social changes and the increase in human capital have brought about an increase in population mobility and migration frequency,making the connection between children and parents less strong,and the family mutual insurance is being reshaped.At present,the problems of aging and childlessness have posed serious challenges to the existing pension system.With the loosening of the "soil" for family mutual insurance,does the "sowing and reaping" mechanism of education investment still exist? If this mechanism is effective,is encouraging family mutual insurance and increasing investment in education a new way to break the current retirement dilemma in the context of increasing population aging?To answer the above questions,this paper takes China’s education expansion policy as the institutional background and focuses on "one center and three aspects".The "one center" is the "sowing-harvesting" mechanism of education investment in family mutual insurance."This paper examines the changes in the welfare attitudes,welfare access,and welfare enhancement of the elderly in the process of education development and their influencing mechanisms from three perspectives: the structure of family mutual insurance,the quality of family mutual insurance support,and intergenerational family transfers,respectively,to provide policy recommendations for China to cope with the demographic transition.The study provides policy recommendations to cope with the demographic transition.First,this paper examines the effect of children’s education level on older adults’ perceptions of support responsibilities and welfare attitudes in the institutional context of compulsory education expansion and discusses the mechanism of action behind this effect from the perspective of the family support structure in old age.In terms of measurement methods,this paper constructs instrumental variables based on the differences in the implementation time of the Compulsory Education Law in different provinces and information on the age of children’s enrollment and uses a two-stage least squares approach to make causal inferences.The study finds that educational expansion changes the welfare attitudes of the elderly.It was found that as the number of years of children’s education increased,the lower the older adults’ perception of children supporting their parents and the higher the tendency of welfare attitudes toward the government being responsible for their old age.The results of the mechanism test suggest that changes in the structure of family support for old age are an important channel through which educational expansion affects older adults’ welfare attitudes.First,the higher the education level of children,the lower the probability of living with parents,and the less they see and care for their parents,thus triggering a "substitution effect" in elderly parents’ attitudes toward old-age support,leading to a decrease in elderly parents’ perceptions of child support and a preference for government responsibility for oldage care.Second,as the educational level increases,the strength of children’s intergenerational financial support will also increase,leading to the "income effect" of elderly parents’ attitudes toward old age.Third,more educated children will bring knowledge spillover,and older people will become more aware of the meaning of political participation and civic power.Thus,an increase in children’s education will bring about an "information effect" in which older adults will become more active in civic politics and increase their attitudes toward the welfare of government pensions.Second,this paper examines the welfare acquisition effect of having children with higher education for older adults in the institutional context of the higher education expansion policy and tests the mechanism of action from the perspective of the quality of family support in old age.In terms of econometrics,this paper constructs instrumental variables based on the differences in the impact of the higher education expansion policy across provinces and whether children took the college entrance examination in the year the policy was implemented and uses a two-stage least squares approach to make causal inferences.The study finds that educational expansion alters the welfare access of older adults.Higher education for children increases older parents’ propensity to retire,decreases the probability of older adults participating in the workforce and labor intensity,and makes older adults more willing to engage in recreational activities.In addition,higher education of children significantly improves the physical health status of elderly parents and also reduces the prevalence of mental illness and depression as well as increases the life satisfaction of elderly people.The results of the mechanism test suggest that changes in the quality of family aging support are an important channel through which educational expansion affects older adults’ welfare acquisition.First,from the perspective of the quantity of intergenerational economic support,higher education for children substantially increases intergenerational economic support for parents,thus enhancing the welfare of older adults.Second,from the perspective of reducing the burden of living for older adults,higher education levels result in the lower chances of living with parents,thus making intergenerational care for older adults less likely.Thus,it helps to improve their physical and mental health.Finally,from the perspective of quality of life investment,children with higher education levels are more inclined to invest in the quality of life of their parents,such as helping them to quit bad habits,increasing their willingness to seek medical treatment and purchasing insurance for the elderly,all of which help to improve the life welfare of the elderly.After that,this paper constructs a three-period overlapping generations model(OLG model)under two old-age care models.The two retirement models are the "social retirement model" in which the government is solely responsible for retirement and the "family participation retirement model" in which the family transfers intergenerational payments.After the equilibrium solution of the model,the paths of demographic age structure change,pension contribution rate adjustment,and public education expenditure ratio change on macroeconomic growth and elderly welfare are discussed in a comparative static analysis.Finally,the effects of population age structure and fiscal expenditure structure on the growth of elderly welfare under different pension models are compared based on parameter calibration and numerical simulations.The study finds that a rebound in fertility increases the welfare of the elderly and that family participation in the old-age model can generate higher economic growth rates than under the social old-age model.In the context of population aging,family participation in old-age care can lead to relatively higher welfare for the elderly compared to social old-age care,thus reducing the welfare loss caused by population aging.In terms of pension contribution rate,when the pension contribution rate is within a certain range,the family participation in the old-age care model can enhance both the economic growth rate and the welfare of the elderly.As the population ages and the fertility rate regains,lowering the pension contribution rate in the family participation model can lead to higher economic growth and elderly welfare.The mechanism of action analysis shows that the family participation pension model can receive a more stable investment in public education than the social pension model.At the same time,intergenerational transfers to older parents can increase the welfare of the elderly,while transfers to adult children can increase the human capital investment of the family and enhance the welfare of the elderly through economic acceleration.Under the family participation model,intergenerational family transfers allow for a redistribution of family resources,when lower contribution rates increase family savings,human capital investment,and transfers to the elderly,thus contributing more to economic acceleration and increased elderly welfare.The results of this paper suggest that two resource allocation "knobs" can be adjusted through intergenerational transfers and government fiscal instruments to promote both macroeconomic growth and individual welfare enhancement.Finally,based on the above findings,combined with the content of the“Fourteenth Five-Year Plan” regarding education policy and old-age security policy,this paper focuses on reviving the tradition of family old-age care and encouraging intergenerational mutual assistance among family members;accelerating the recommended high-quality development of education and focusing on the balanced distribution of education resources;expanding the scope of old-age service supply and narrowing the gap between urban and rural areas;and bridging the gap between family and old-age services.The policy recommendations are made in four aspects:opening up the cooperation channels between families and the government in oldage care and establishing a multidimensional support system for old-age security,thus providing a policy basis to cope with the impact of demographic transition.