| The Housing Provident Fund(HPF)system in China was established in the early 1990 s,drawing on the experience of Singapore’s central provident fund.The original intention of the system was to ease the financial pressure of the government and enterprises to build houses.With the abolition of the welfare housing distribution system,the accumulation fund has gradually evolved into a housing finance system to improve the housing consumption level of urban residents.Although the HPF has played a supporting role in improving residents’ housing consumption and protecting residents’ housing demand,from the perspective of provident fund payment units,most of them are government agencies,public institutions or state-owned enterprises,while some private enterprises,selfemployed households and other types of working groups are excluded by the provident fund.The system only covers the employees who pay the provident fund,so the welfare effect of the provident fund is not fully reflected.In addition,due to the limitation of high down payment for house purchase,there is also a certain threshold for using low interest loans of provident fund to buy houses,which leads to limited use of provident fund.The debate about the HPF of "subsidizing house purchase without house purchase and short-term interest calculation for long-term deposits" is endless,and the call for its reform is growing.Moreover,in the post epidemic period,people also pay more attention to the overall welfare effect of the HPF.Therefore,based on the survey data of China’s household finance,this paper analyzes the welfare effect of the HPF in China,discusses the problems existing in the implementation of the existing system,and analyzes the path to improve the welfare effect of the HPF by using the research method of combining theoretical models with empirical analysis.The HPF in China has been implemented for more than 30 years,and has made considerable progress and development.Both the amount of the HPF and the number of employees who have paid for HPF have increased steadily,and the composition of the work units of employees who have paid for the HPF has become more reasonable;The amount of provident fund withdrawn has been increasing year by year,and the proportion of provident fund withdrawn for repaying the principal and interest of house purchase loan has been increasing;The amount and number of personal loans granted by the provident fund fluctuate greatly,which is closely related to the policies related to housing consumption;The mechanism for employees to obtain income from the HPF is mainly the difference of opportunity cost caused by individual tax reduction,low interest loans and low deposit interest.Based on the analysis of the current situation of the operation of the HPF in China,and based on the operation and management of the HPF,this paper includes the deposit of the HPF,the repayment of loan principal and value-added income into the input indicators,and the withdrawal of the HPF,loan and management expenses into the output indicators,and constructs the input and output indicator system of housing provident fund.Combined with the operation data of China’s housing provident fund from 2014 to 2021,The DEA Malmquist model is used to measure the operation effect of the housing accumulation fund system.The results show that the comprehensive technical efficiency of China’s housing provident fund system improved in 2015 and 2016,and deteriorated in 2017-2021.In general,taking 2014 as the benchmark,the operation effect level of China’s housing provident fund system in the past eight years needs to be improved and enhanced.In order to analyze the welfare effect of the HPF in China,this paper selects the data from 2013,2015 and 2017 China’s household finance survey,and uses Probit model,IV Probit model,fixed effect panel model,propensity score matching and other methods to empirically test the impact of the HPF on housing consumption,non-housing consumption and residents’ happiness,and systematically examines the welfare effect of the housing provident fund system on different groups.Analyzing the welfare effect of the HPF from the housing consumption channels,the results show that the contribution of provident fund can significantly improve the household housing consumption level,and improve the probability of the family owning the house with its own property rights.In addition,this conclusion weakens the endogenous problems caused by missing variables and reverse causation when selecting the coverage rate of pension insurance as the tool variable of whether to pay provident fund,and selecting one-to-two,one-to-four and local linear regression matching methods are still robust after reducing the problem of sample selectivity of empirical samples.Furthermore,the increase of provident fund contribution has a significant positive impact on household housing consumption.The contribution of public accumulation fund to housing consumption has great heterogeneity,which is shown as follows: from different regions,the contribution of public accumulation fund has a significant role in promoting the housing consumption level of families in the east,middle and west regions,but the contribution of public accumulation fund to the promotion of family housing consumption in the central region is the largest,followed by the west,and the east is the smallest;From the perspective of different household income levels,the housing consumption of middle-income and high-income families can be significantly increased by depositing provident fund,but it has no significant impact on the housing consumption of low-income families;From the perspective of different types of household registration,the contribution of provident fund has a certain role in promoting the housing consumption level of the households in the street where they currently live and the households whose household registration is not in the street where they currently live,and the role in promoting the households in the street where they currently live is greater than that of the households whose household registration is not in the street where they currently live;From the perspective of different work units,the contribution of provident fund can significantly improve the housing consumption level of the working groups in government departments,public institutions or state-owned enterprises,but has no significant impact on the housing consumption level of the working groups in collective,private or foreign-funded enterprises.As housing consumption is not only manifested in housing purchase behavior,that is,whether or not to own housing property rights,but also in family decision-making on multiple housing units,housing area and housing value,further discussion on family housing consumption by housing provident fund shows that housing provident fund payment improves the possibility of family owning multiple housing property rights,enabling families to live in housing with higher housing value but smaller housing area.This paper analyzes the welfare effect of housing provident fund system from the perspective of non-housing consumption channels,and discusses the impact of housing provident fund system on family non housing consumption level by level based on the attributes of different types of family work units and the amount of contributions to construct a grouping model and a quantile model.The empirical results show that the housing accumulation fund system can significantly improve the household non housing consumption level,and the system has a certain welfare effect to improve the household consumption level.This result is still stable after regression by year,region,consumption type and propensity score matching method.It is worth noting that although the provident fund system can improve the nonhousing consumption of families,there are obvious differences for different types of depository families: from the perspective of the nature of family members’ working units,the non-housing consumption level of families working in government agencies,public institutions or state-owned enterprises is significantly higher than that of families working in other types of units,and when depository families work in government agencies The greater the number of working members in public institutions or state-owned enterprises,the greater the role of promoting non-housing consumption;From the perspective of household consumption level,the increase of provident fund contribution has a “crowding out effect” for low non housing consumption level families,reducing the welfare level of low consumption families,while the increase of provident fund contribution has a positive “incentive effect”for high non housing consumption level families;From the perspective of household consumption structure,the main increase of housing provident fund is the expenditure on necessities such as food,clothing,daily necessities,education and training to improve the health level of family members and the accumulation of human capital,and the consumption expenditure such as water,electricity,heating and communication to improve the quality of family life.Furthermore,in order to analyze the reasons why the provident fund system has a heterogeneous impact on different types of families,this paper constructs the relative deprivation variables of the participants in the provident fund system,and discusses them in categories according to the nature of the respondent’s work unit and income level.The results show that the groups working in non-governmental organizations,public institutions or state-owned enterprises,as well as low-income groups,have reduced their wage income due to the payment of the HPF,and feel a clear sense of deprivation.The reason is that these two groups have low withdrawal rate and amount of accumulation fund,which limits the welfare effect of housing accumulation fund system;At the same time,the contribution of provident fund has not only squeezed their wage income,but also faced the risk of loss of deposit interest,which is also the main reason for the low level of non-housing consumption of this group.The welfare effect of the HPF is analyzed from the perspective of residents’ happiness.The results show that participation in the provident fund system can significantly improve residents’ happiness,which confirms that housing provident fund has the welfare effect of improving people’s livelihood.The empirical research conclusion is still robust after annual regression,replacement of explained variables and econometric models,correction of sample selection errors and use of instrumental variables to solve the endogenous problems in the model.The influence of participating in the provident fund system on residents’ sense of happiness has a greater heterogeneity,which is shown as follows: First,participating in the provident fund system has no significant impact on the sense of happiness of people under 35 years old,but has a significant role in promoting the sense of happiness of people aged 35-50 and 50 years old and above,and the role of promoting happiness increases with age;Second,the contribution of provident fund can significantly improve the well-being of the groups with housing and loans and the groups without housing,but has no significant impact on the well-being of the groups with housing and no loans;Third,the contribution of provident fund has improved the well-being of the lower income and higher income groups,that is,the middle-income group,but has no significant impact on the well-being of residents in the lowest income group and the highest income group;Fourth,from the perspective of the nature of the employer,the contribution of provident fund has a positive effect on the well-being of the working groups in government departments,public institutions and stateowned enterprises,but has no significant effect on the well-being of the working groups in collective,private or foreign-funded enterprises.In order to explore the impact mechanism of the housing provident fund system on improving residents’ happiness,this paper analyzes the impact of the HPF from the pressure of housing loans and the causes of unpaid housing provident fund,and finds that participating in the housing provident fund can significantly reduce the pressure of housing loans for the groups with housing loans.In addition,compared with the situation of unpaid housing provident fund due to personal reasons of employees,The unit does not give employees the housing provident fund,resulting in a lower level of happiness;Secondly,this paper examines the impact of participating in the housing provident fund system on residents’ housing consumption from the aspects of housing ownership and housing purchase plan,and finds that participating in the housing provident fund system significantly improves the probability of residents owning houses with their own property rights and the possibility of purchasing houses in the future,thus improving the sense of happiness.According to the above research results,this paper believes that the HPF has the welfare effect of improving the consumption level of the participating groups and improving the livelihood of the people,but the impact of the system on the welfare level of different groups has greater heterogeneity.In order to improve the security level of the system and make the welfare effect of the system benefit more people,we should improve the payment coverage,withdrawal and use,supervision and management of the housing provident fund system and establish a multi-level oriented housing finance system policy to implement the security effect of the HPF of “housing for a living”,and gradually eliminate the unfair impact of the system. |
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