| Since the reform and opening up,along with the rapid growth of the national economy,the income gap of Chinese families has gradually widened.Although the official statistics of the National Bureau of Statistics show that the Gini coefficient of income in China has shown a downward trend in recent years,due to the existence of non-negligible biases in the process of measurement of income inequality,it may be too early to conclude that Chinese residents' income inequality has entered the downtrend channel.The increase in income inequality is not only detrimental to sustained economic growth and social stability,but may also have an important impact on household borrowing behavior.With the rising income inequality in China,the overall scale of China's household debt has expanded dramatically,and it shows a clear regional difference,which may be closely related to the level of urbanization,economic development and housing prices in the region.On the other hand,as a"regulator" of income distribution,social security has improved the income level of disadvantaged groups through redistribution,narrowed the income gap between groups,and affected household lending behavior to a certain extent.In the past ten years,the absolute scale of fiscal social security expenditures in China has increased substantially.After comparing the social security expenditures and household loan balances in different regions,we found that the higher the social security expenditure,the lower the household loan balance.Then,is the difference in social security expenditures the cause of differences in household lending behavior in different regions,and does the impact of income inequality on household lending behaviors change due to social security spending?In view of this,this paper adopts literature analysis,comparative analysis,and a combination of theoretical analysis and empirical analysis,uses the data of China Family Panel Studies(CFPS)and provincial-level social security expenditure,and investigates the impact of income inequality on Chinese household borrowing behavior from the perspective of social security expenditure.Firstly,this paper constructs the mechanism of income inequality and social security expenditures affecting household borrowing behavior through the detailed explanation of the theory of household borrowing behavior,income inequality and social security expenditure;Secondly,constructing a new data set based on the 2010-2014 CFPS micro-data and the data of provincial-level social security expenditures.Based on this data set,carrying out the descriptive statistics of the core variables of this paper,and putting forward the basic assumptions studied in this paper;Then,using panel Probit model,panel Tobit model and Instrumental Variable method,this paper empirically examines the impact of income inequality and social security expenditure on household borrowing behavior,and further examines the moderating effect of social security expenditures on the relationship between income inequality and household borrowing behavior;Finally,this paper compares and analyzes the relationship between the conclusions of this study and the existing literature,clarifies the contribution of this study,and designs a set of targeted and operational policy recommendations combining with the family income inequality in China,the size and structure of social security expenditures,and the characteristics of household borrowing behavior,The research shows that:(1)Income inequality is an important factor affecting household borrowing behavior.As the expansion of income inequality,the probability and scale of household borrowing will increase,and compared with high-income households and middle-income households,the expansion in income inequality has a greater impact on the demand for household borrowing in low-income groups;(2)There is a crowding-out effect of social security expenditure on household borrowing behavior.The“income effect " of social security expenditure has reduced the demand for household borrowing to a certain extent,reduced the willingness of household to borrow and the scale of borrowing.At the same time,this paper find the greater the scale of social security expenditure,the more pronounced the crowding out effect.In addition,By comparing the impact of different types of social security expenditures on household borrowing behavior,it is not difficult to find that the crowding-out effect of social security and employment expenditures on household borrowing behavior is greater than the effect of social medical expenditure on household borrowing behavior;(3)Social security expenditure plays a negative regulatory in the process of income inequality affecting household borrowing behavior.That is,the increase in social security expenditure can slow down the contribution of income inequality to household borrowing behavior.The main contributions of this paper are as follows:(1)Based on the fact that income inequality continues expanding,from the perspective of social security expenditure,this paper examines the impact of income inequality and social security expenditure on household borrowing behavior,and identifies the moderating effect of social security expenditure on the relationship between income inequality and household borrowing behavior.The conclusion provides a new perspective for explaining regional differences in household borrowing behavior;(2)Using the micro-panel data of CFPS 2010-2014 and its matching provincial-level social security expenditure,this paper constructs a new macro-micro data set through the provincial variables of the household and the year variables.Under the premise of overcoming the endogenous problem of the model,it empirically examines the impact of income inequality and social security expenditure on household borrowing behavior. |
