The Relationship Between Consumption And Saving Behaviors Of The Elderly And Their Adult Children's Income

The amount of the elderly population has keeping raised in these twenty years since China became an aging society in 1999.The aging of population in our country has impacted areas as economy and social security,the development of social economy brings the change of family structure and inter-generational relations,all these give the elderly care new problems and challenges,aging of population has became the focus of attention from all walks of life.Thus under the background of the aging we survey the basic economical situation of the elderly in Chengdu,based on the survey,we further survey the basic information about their adult children and the factors that the elderly's adult children,especially how their income influences the elderly's consumption and saving.We found that:(1)The income,consumption and saving of the elderly decrease with age,the elderly has positive saving,which is contrary to the basic viewpoint that Life-Cycle model predicted.(2)The income of the elderly is significantly affected by variables such as gender,education level,marital status,living style and self-assessment of health,and the elderly's consumption has a significantly with education level,marital status,living style and self-assessment of health,but saving is obviously different on gender,age,education level and elf-assessment of health.(3)The number of adult children and their education level and income has significantly relations with the elderly's consumption,but not saving.According to the results above-proved,we designed the experiment of income abundance and deprivation to confirm the relationships between the consumption and saving inclination of the elderly and the elderly and their adult children's income.The results confirms our findings that:(4)The consumption inclination of the elderly changes on income variances of themselves and their adult children,but it significantly changed on the income variance of themselves than their adult children.Based on this finding and previous studies,we further research how consumption and saving of the elderly and their children affect the social supports between the elderly and their adult children.We found that:(5)Accepting social supports from adult children has significant differences on variables such as education level,marital status,the number of adult children and children's education level,besides,the elderly's consumption has significantly differences on accepting adult children's emotional and service supports,but adult children's income has no relations with accepting social supports;(6)Giving social supports to adult children is significantly different on variables like gender,education level,marital status,living style,the number of adult children and children's education level,and consumption of the elderly has obvious differences on giving adult children material and emotional supports,but income of adult children has significantly influences on material support that given to adult children.(7)Saving of the elderly has no relations with social supports between the elderly and their adult children.Based on this research we found that,the consumption needs of the elderly in Chengdu were generally satisfied and it has significant relations with social supports between the elderly and their adult children,but saving emerges when their consumption needs is satisfied and the elderly want saving money for medical and health expenditure or leaving legacy for their adult children,saving has no relation with social supports between the elderly and their adult children.So it is important for the adult children giving their elderly parents material supports to ensure their consumption demands,what's important is giving them more emotional supports,which is not about money.We as children have the duty not only on our elderly parents' material care,but also mentally care.