Impact Of Demographic Change On Household Savings Rate

According to the United Nations’ 2019 World Population Prospects,China’s population aging growth rate ranks first in the world,and since the implementation of the full twochild policy,the birth population has climbed to 17.86 million in 2016,but then fell to15.23 million.The lower birth rate and the further extension of the life expectancy of the population mean that China’s population structure will further develop towards a top-heavy type.The resident saving rate is one of the most important sources of the national saving rate.The rapid superposition of aging and declining birth rates will have an important impact on the household saving rate.Therefore,it is of great policy significance to study the relationship between the household saving rate and changes in the population’s age structure for the government to deal with the continuous aging of the population structure.This article uses the China Health and Nutrition Survey(CHNS)database from 1991 to2015 to construct panel dataset,and uses a fixed-effect model that controls time variables to explore the linkage between the age structure of the household population and the household savings rate.The child dependency ratio and the elderly dependency ratio are the main variables of this article.At the same time,the article also introduces the self-assessed health status of the population to express the level of self-life expectancy.This paper believes that it is the combined effect of population variables,life expectancy effects and preventive savings motives that lead to changes in household savings rates.After controlling for the influence of a series of head-of-household demographic characteristics and household wealth variables,the old-age dependency ratio has no significant effect on household savings,and the decrease in children ’s dependency ratio and the increase in self-life expectancy have significantly increased the level of household savings rates.This article uses other measures of household savings rate and population age structure variables to explore the robustness of the conclusions.Heterogeneity partly constructed sub-samples of eastern,western and central groups and subsamples of urban and rural sectors to explore the differences in the effect of population age structure on the savings rate.The effect of the old-age dependency ratio is still not statistically significant;the importance of children ’s quality due to the cost of education,opportunity cost of childbirth,and the reduction in the number of children is the reason for the heterogeneity of the role of the child dependency ratio,the life expectancy level between regions The difference,the difference in the degree of perfection of the pension system between the urban and rural sectors is the reason why self-expected life expectancy has a heterogeneous effect on the savings rate.This article found in the mechanism analysis section that both the child dependency ratio and the elderly dependency ratio have both a burden effect and preventive savings motivation,but the direction and significance of the final total utility may vary with the age of the child,the age of the head of household,and the level of economic development variety.The article summarizes the research results at the end.According to the current population development trend,meeting the needs of the elderly population while promoting family birth has put forward new requirements for China’s policy formulation,and this article also gives relevant suggestions for reference.