Study On The Impact Of Family Dependency Ratio On Rural Household Consumption Behavior

In 2021,the No.1 Central Document “Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting Rural Revitalization and Accelerating Agricultural and Rural Modernization” stated that“there is an urgent need to expand rural demand and comprehensively promote rural consumption”,and activating the vast rural consumption market has become the key to improving consumption momentum.With the advancement of the rural revitalization strategy,the per capita disposable income of rural residents has continued to increase,and the consumption potential of rural residents has been further released.At the same time,it also brings huge potential to the rural consumer market.The consumption budget of rural residents is based on the family unit,and the changes in the consumption of family members come from family decision-making and are constrained by the same consumption expenditure budget.Rural families are developing towards a declining birthrate and an aging population.These two groups of people have limited consumption capacity,which may lead to the phenomenon of “degradation” of residents’ consumption and affect the consumption behavior of rural families.At the same time,most of the existing studies strictly divide the dependent population and the working population according to age,without considering the inconsistency between the working-age population and the working population.This thesis takes this as a background.First,based on the Life Cycle Hypothesis and Hierarchical Theory of Needs,using the data of the China Household Finance Survey 2017(CHFS2017)and combined with the macro data released by National Bureau of Statistics of China to describe and analyze the rural household dependency ratio and The current consumption status of rural residents.Secondly,measure the rural family dependency ratio from three perspectives,take it as the core explanatory variable,and make corresponding improvements to the inconsistency between the working-age population and the employed population in the family dependency ratio.Taking consumption level and consumption structure as the explained variables to investigate the consumption behavior of rural households,and introducing family characteristics,household head characteristics and regional characteristics as control variables.Finally,Using Stata software for descriptive statistical analysis,basic regression analysis and robustness test,analyzes and discusses the influence of different types of family dependency ratio changes on rural family consumption behavior.Using the Seemingly Unrelated Regressions model to explore the relationship between various types of consumption changes in rural households,and using the Quantile Regression model to explore the influence of family dependency ratio on the consumption structure of rural households with different consumption levels.The research conclusions of this thesis are as follows.first,the increase in the proportion of family supporters has boosted the total consumption expenditure of rural households.The promoting effect of the child dependency ratio on total consumption expenditure increases with the age of the adolescent population,and family support for the non-working elderly over 65 years old,which reduces the total household consumption expenditure.Second,the child dependency ratio promotes rural household consumption expenditures on food,clothing,housing,and education and entertainment,and is mainly reflected in education and entertainment consumption.Third,on the one hand,the old-age dependency ratio reduces rural household spending on food,clothing,equipment services,and education and entertainment,on the other hand,the stimulating effect of the old-age dependency ratio on rural household consumption is manifested in health care spending.Fourth,the total dependency ratio,the child dependency ratio,and the old-age dependency ratio all significantly reduced rural households’ transportation and communication consumption,and the reduction of the old-age dependency ratio was even more pronounced.Fifth,the family dependency ratio reduces rural households’ subsistence consumption expenditure,and it is more obvious in rural households with low subsistence consumption expenditure.Among them,the elderly population over 65 years old who are still working has significantly reduced the rural households’ subsistence consumption expenditure.Sixth,the family dependency ratio promotes rural family developmental and hedonic consumption expenditure.The dependency ratio of the population aged 0-16 promotes the expenditure of such consumption in rural households with low developmental and hedonic expenditure,and reduces the expenditure on such consumption in rural households with high developmental and hedonic expenditure.The dependency ratio of the16-22-year-old population has a stronger role in promoting the middle developmental and hedonic consumption expenditure households.The promotion effect of the old-age dependency ratio on the developmental and hedonic consumption in rural families increases from the low quantile to the high quantile.