A Study On The Differences Of Household Consumption Behavior From The Perspective Of Life Cycle

In the past 30 years,China’s economy as a whole has achieved continuous and stable high-speed growth,but at the same time,China’s consumption rate has shown an overall trend of continuous decline,and the problem of "high savings" or "low consumption" in the residential sector has become more and more prominent,which not only hinders the vitality of China’s economic development,but also reflects to a certain extent the current situation of insufficient consumer demand in China.This not only hinders the vitality of China’s economic development,but also reflects to a certain extent the current situation of insufficient consumer demand in China,which is contrary to the fundamental goal of people’s happiness.Why does this "high savings mystery" arise and how can it be alleviated? Based on the life cycle perspective of households,this paper focuses on exploring the stage differences of household consumption behavior at the micro level,with a view to finding micro explanations for the lack of consumption power of residents at different life stages,further enriching the life cycle theory of consumption,and providing a basis for policy formulation to activate the market environment for residents’ consumption.This paper firstly analyzes the main influencing factors and mechanisms of residents’ consumption behavior under different household life cycle stages,summarizes the possible channels of transmission effects among them and judges the final direction of influence;secondly,measures and analyzes residents’ household consumption behavior and elaborates its characteristics;then studies the three groups of residents’ households at the stages of youth,middle age and old age separately to seek the evolution of life cycle stages Finally,we summarize the main conclusions of this paper and propose policy recommendations to improve the consumption level of Chinese residents based on the life cycle perspective.Based on the reality and combining theoretical and empirical analysis,the main conclusions of this paper’s research are as follows.With regard to the youth stage of the life cycle,this paper takes the "marriage competition" motive as the starting point to study the precautionary saving motive before marriage and the consumption release process after marriage,taking into account the heavy pressure of home purchase and marriage match pressure of contemporary youth.The paper further explores the moderating effects of house price and gender in the process of marital competition on household consumption behavior.It is finally confirmed that consumption behavior when both youth gender is male and home purchase pressure is higher are further inhibited by the marital competition effect.It reveals the strong savings motive implied by the current lack of consumption power of the youth group and explains the internal logic between marital competition,housing,individual gender and household consumption behavior,which provides a valuable basis for policies to improve the consumption demand of the youth stage group.Based on the life cycle theory and the overlapping generations model,this paper investigates the effects of the number of children of household heads,age effect and growth stage effect on their household consumption behavior,and considers the income penalty effect,income incentive effect,intergenerational support behavior,"reverse feeding" behavior between children and parents,as well as human capital investment motives.Based on the effects of income penalty,income incentive,intergenerational support behavior,"back feeding" behavior,and human capital investment motivation between children and parents,we further estimate the mediated utility of household consumption behavior at infancy,school age,adult spouse selection,and married stages of children’s development using household income level,education expenditure,home purchase loan,and intergenerational economic transfer as mediating variables.Ultimately,it is found that children in the infant and toddler stage,school-age stage,adult spouse selection stage and married stage have different effects and intrinsic mechanisms on household consumption levels.This reflects the inherent social contradictions that hinder economic development and echoes the serious "competition for marriage" dilemma in the study of the youth stage.Moreover,it also confirms the contribution of increasing total fertility to household consumption levels and the pressure of raising infants and young children,which provides a more concrete basis for proposing targeted consumption stimulation policies.In the empirical study of this paper,the effect of children’s characteristics on the consumption level of the elderly is investigated,and the moderating effect of income utility in the process of children’s characteristics on the consumption behavior of the elderly is further estimated,and the effect of intergenerational support flows between the elderly households and their children on the consumption level of the elderly households is estimated using intergenerational net economic inflows as a mediating variable.consumption levels.It is found that the most important motivation that hinders the consumption demand of elderly households originates from the excessive bequest motivation of the elderly.This reflects,to some extent,the heavier life pressures of young people today.When the number of elderly children is 1-2,the consumption level of elderly households is significantly higher than that of households with 3 or more children,reflecting the fact that before or in the early stage of the implementation of the fertility policy,fertility and family socio-economic status may show an inverse relationship,and the dilemma of "the poorer you have,the poorer you are,the more you have" is somewhat alleviated under the strict implementation of the fertility policy.The dilemma of "the poorer the births,the poorer the births" has been alleviated under the strict implementation of the fertility policy.Compared with the existing studies,the innovations of this paper are:(1)this paper divides the family life cycle into three stages,which enriches the consumption theory adapted to China.Traditional consumption studies focus on "middle-age" samples,and even though there are a few studies on household consumption behavior based on youth and old-age samples,they lack exploration under the same theoretical system.This paper uses CFPS data from 2010-2018 to study the consumption behavior of Chinese households from each of the three stages,combining theory with practice and refining the study of residents’ consumption under the life-cycle perspective.(2)This paper uses inductive reasoning and other methods to analyze various channels such as marital competition effect,precautionary saving motive,and bequest motive to analyze the influencing factors affecting household consumption behavior in different life-cycle stages.Through this paper,it is found that there are both commonalities and differences in the causes of the "low consumption" phenomenon among different life stage groups,and the strength of each channel of influence also varies.(3)Most scholars have focused on the effects of the number of children and childbearing behavior on household consumption behavior,but the effects and conclusions of the effects have not been conclusively established.After analyzing and summarizing this paper,we found that the problem comes from the differences in the scholars’ research subjects,the scope of research families,and the growth stages of children studied.The mechanism of children’s influence on family consumption behavior varies from "income penalty" and"income incentive" to "human capital investment" motivation.human capital investment" motive,to the "marital competition" utility and the release of precautionary savings,etc.The direction and intensity of these effects vary across children’s ages.In this paper,we analyze the effects of children’s age on household consumption levels,consumption rates,and consumption structures at different stages of life by further dividing the children’s age into stages of growth from the same system database.