A Study On The Influence Of Relaxing The Family Planning Policy On Household Savings And Investment Decisions

The "low consumption,high savings" behavior of Chinese households and their limited participation in the financial market have become important factors in the economic development and transformation,and therefore have attracted wide attention from the academic circles.Population structure is an important factor.On the one hand,changes in family size and structure caused by low fertility are important reasons for families to choose high savings;On the other hand,the increase of population size will also have a profound impact on household investment decisions.The family planning policy that our country has been implementing has slowed down the rapid growth of our population,but at the same time,it has also made the country pay a high social price-accelerated aging,premature "getting old before getting rich",etc.In order to solve the problem of the shortage of new labor in China,China’s fertility policy has gradually undergone adjustment and change: the policy of "selective two children" was implemented at the end of 2013,the policy of "universal two children" was implemented in 2016,and in 2021,three child policy were implemented.It is obvious that the open birth policy will change the family size and structure,which may change the structure of household savings and investment.In this context,this paper studies the impact of the family’s second child birth decision on household savings decisions and asset choices after the implementation of the "two child alone" policy and the "comprehensive two child" policy.The decision to have a second child will greatly increase the household expenditure on food,medical care,nutrition and health care,and infant care in the short term,resulting in a reduction in household savings;Thus,the family will reduce the investment probability of financial assets and housing assets.Based on this,taking the "selective two-child" and "universal two-child" policies as natural experiments,a multi-period double-difference(DID)model was used to examine the relationship between the relaxation of the fertility policy and household savings and investment decisions.The influence paths of savings and investment decisions are tested by mechanism,and heterogeneity analysis is carried out with family income and child gender as classification criteria.In this paper,the savings rate,the logarithm of financial assets held,and whether housing assets are held are taken as explanatory variables,and families are divided into two groups: policy applicability and policy non-applicability,as the treatment groups and the control groups,to evaluate the impact of the "selective two child" and "universal two child" policies on household savings and investment decisions.The results show that the relaxation of the family planning policy will reduce the possibility of household saving decisions in China,and will also reduce household investment in financial assets and housing assets.After the implementation of the "selective two children" and "universal two children" policies,households may make the decision to have two children,which will significantly reduce their saving behavior,and their participation and investment in the financial market,leading to holding less financial assets and housing assets.Further research shows that the impact of the relaxation of the fertility policy on household savings decisions is due to the fact that fertility decisions will increase households’ various maternal and child-related expenditures,thereby reducing household savings,leading to a reduction in the resources used by households for investment and changes in family risk preferences,thereby reducing the investment in household financial assets and housing assets.Considering that there are differences in the recognition of the opening of the family planning policy,this paper classifies the samples base on the family income and the gender of the first child,and then conducts a heterogeneity test.The results show that there are heterogeneity effects on the response of the households with different family income and the gender of the first child to the relaxation of the family planning policy.This study makes up for the lack of theoretical research on fertility policy.Most of the existing literature studies the impact of household savings behavior and investment behavior from family planning,ignoring the angle of relaxation of the family planning policy.With the background of relaxing the family planning policy,this paper conducts an in-depth study on the household saving decision-making and asset investment decision-making behavior in China,and further analyzes the impact mechanism and heterogeneous impact,providing a more diversified and enriched Chinese basis for new theoretical understanding,and further enriching the relevant literature.In practice,this paper can not only help families to reasonably consume and save,but also scientifically choose asset investment plans;It can also provide theoretical guidance for the government to formulate policies to stimulate household consumption and increase household property income.