Family Age Structure And Investment Decision

With the rapid economic development and gradual accumulation of family wealth,the demand for family investment in China has become increasingly prominent,and the scale and structure of family finance has also appeared new features.Based on the data of the China Family Database(CFD)of Zhejiang University and China Family Finance Survey(CHFS)of Southwestern University in 2015,this paper makes an analysis and empirical study on the Chinese family investment in financial assets from the perspective of family age structure.In order to comprehensively investigate the impact of age structure on family financial asset selection,this paper chooses the age of householder and the proportion of aged population and young population to measure the family age structure from two dimensions of life-cycle and age-structure.Considering the research progress of the existing literature synthetically,explanatory variables chose deposits as the representative of safe financial assets,and stocks,funds and bonds as the representative of risk financial assets.Probit model and Tobit model are used to study family investment.Through theoretical and empirical analysis,the main conclusions of this paper are as follows:(1)In the dimension of life cycle,deposits and risky financial assets such as stock are severally represented as “U” structure and inverted “U” structure.Family in different life cycles have different investment performances in financial market.The investment decisions of young,middle-aged and elderly family are influenced by the characteristics of different age stages and economic condition.(2)In the dimension of age structure,the increase in the proportion of aged population will lead to an increase in the proportion of deposits.At the same time,the participation in the stock,fund and bond markets are significant.The increase in the proportion of young population will reduce family investmen on the risk financial assets,such as stocks,funds,bonds and so on.But the impact of deposit participation is not significant.However,there are obvious differences between different regions.(3)Factors affecting family investment include gender,marital status,education level,income,housing situation and so on.The direction and extent of their influence are different.(4)There are obvious regional differences in the choice of family financial asset.Compared with the rural and Western family,urban and Eastern family is more developed and they will participate in the risk financial market more and more deeply because of their higher income,richer financial awareness and investment experience.Finally,according to the empirical research conclusions and the domestic economic and social situation,the corresponding suggestions are put forward to promote the healthy development of family finance in China.