Research On Family Fertility And Housing Policy Decisions Under Health Risk And Labor Income Risk

When residents get married,a new family is born.Every family will make many decisions in their life,and fertility decision and housing decision are two very important decisions.The importance of these two kinds of decision is mainly reflected in two aspects.Firstly,fertility decision and housing decision of family will have long-term aftereffect,that is,once the family decides to have a child or buy a house,it will have a great impact on its subsequent decades of decision-making and change decisions of family;The second is the economic significance of fertility decision and housing decision,that is,once the family decides to give birth or buy a house,the future parenting expenditure or housing loan expenditure will become the main components of family economic expenditure and affect other economic decisions of the family.At the same time,there is a resonance between the fertility decision and housing decision of family,that is,the more children in the family,the greater the demand for family housing area.In addition,based on the long-term aftereffect and economic significance of fertility decision and housing decision,a family have to consider the future uncertainty when making decisions,mainly health risk and labor income risk.Based on the contradiction between China’s gradually liberalized fertility policy and the still declining fertility rate,this thesis attempts to study the two most important types of family decision,fertility decision and housing decision from the micro level,through the construction of family life cycle model,and analyze when facing health risk and labor income risk,and when families need to make housing decision at the same time,whether the family will choose to have the first child,whether it will choose to have the second child and whether it will choose to have the third child.Based on the principle of maximizing lifetime expected utility,this thesis establishes a family consumption-savings-fertility-housing decision-making model,analyzes the optimal fertility decision and the corresponding optimal housing decision of family,and analyzes the impact of health risk,income risk,real estate market,initial wealth and other factors on family fertility decision.The results show that,firstly,through the results of the benchmark model,it can be seen that whether for a newly married family,a family with one child already or a family with two children already,continuing fertility behavior will significantly increase the lifetime expected utility of family.For the family under different initial conditions set in this thesis,the optimal first child childbearing age of a newly married family is 32 years old,the optimal second child childbearing age of a family with one child already is 31 years old,and the optimal third child childbearing age of a family with two children already is 35 years old.That is to say,for families under the hypothesis of economic man,there does not exist the problem that families are unwilling to bear children,which leads to the fact that the essence of China’s fertility problem is the problem of marriage rate.The low willingness to marry leads to the reduction of the number of families at the proper age of childbearing,and the effect of the rise of the second-child fertility rate brought by the comprehensive second-child policy is gradually narrowed,resulting in the decline of the overall fertility rate.The comprehensive third child policy is an emergency policy,which can bring a certain effect of increasing fertility,but it will gradually narrow down as the comprehensive second child effect.To solve the problem of declining fertility rate,the problem that residents are unwilling to marry need to be solved.Secondly,for newly married families,compared with the situation of not having fertility behavior,having the first child will enhance the family’s willingness to buy a house earlier,make the family more risk averse,take prudent decisions,reduce the probability of bankruptcy,and reduce the level of wealth accumulation;For families with one child already,having the second child will make the family more cautious,lower the probability of bankruptcy,reduce the maximum purchase area of house,reduce the level of wealth accumulation and reduce the consumption level of non-durable goods;For families with two children already,having the third child has a slight impact on the family’s house purchase decision and wealth accumulation level,but it will significantly reduce the consumption level of non-durable goods in the early stage of the family.Finally,from the results of sensitivity analysis and scenario analysis,it can be seen that the initial wealth of family can promote the fertility decision of family,but the amount of wealth required to significantly make the family bear a child earlier is very high,which can not produce immediate and significant effects through the subsidy policy;Health risk has little impact on family fertility decision,only delaying the optimal childbearing age by 0 to 1 year,but it will make the family bear a higher probability of bankruptcy;However,the risk of critical illness will significantly delay the birth of the third child of families,delaying the optimal childbearing age from 35 to 40.Therefore,the promotion of medical insurance can promote and encourage families to have children as soon as possible;In terms of house price,this thesis considers the high house price scenario with the house price as five times of the benchmark model.From the results,it can be seen that when the house price is too high and it is too difficult for families to buy a house,families will still choose to have children,choose to rent a house or buy a small-area house for living,but will not give up having children for the purpose of buying a house.The research of this thesis still has some limitations,which can be further studied in the future.In order to ensure the feasibility of numerical simulation,the model is partially simplified,which can continue to be optimized;The model can also add factors such as family insurance decision and government maternity subsidy policy,which can be discussed in combination in the future study.