The Impact Of Residents' Fertility Behavior On Household Financial Asset Allocatio

Households are micro-entities involved in social and economic activities,and they are also one of the main participants in the financial market.In recent years,China’s financial market has developed rapidly and households have achieved rapid accumulation of wealth,but compared with developed Western countries,Chinese households’ participation in financial markets is low: data show that the proportion of Chinese households’ financial assets in total wealth is only 20.4% on average,and the financial asset allocation structure is single,with only less than 10% of households participating in risky financial assets such as stocks and funds,therefore The financial asset allocation behavior of households should receive more attention.With the innovative development of financial markets and the increase of household income,households have more choices in financial asset allocation.On the other hand,against the background of the continuous liberalization of fertility policy,the number of children and gender structure of Chinese residents have also changed significantly at this stage,and it is important to study the impact of residents’ fertility behavior on household financial asset allocation.Based on the data of the 2019 China Household Finance Survey(CHFS),this article divides residents’ fertility behavior into the number of children and the gender structure of children,and divides households’ financial asset allocation behavior into the percentage of financial assets allocation,the probability of risky financial assets allocation and the percentage of risky financial assets allocation,and empirically analyzes the specific effects of residents’ fertility behavior on the above three explanatory variables using OLS,Probit and Tobit models,and tries to give constructive opinions from three perspectives: households,financial markets and government.The article is mainly divided into five parts: Chapter 1 describes the research background and significance of the paper,presents the research ideas and methods,and points out the innovations and possible shortcomings of this paper;Chapter 2mainly composes and summarizes the relevant literature and theoretical results of previous studies;Chapter 3 explains and illustrates the data,variables and models used in the empirical analysis of this paper,and does descriptive Chapter 4 provides an empirical analysis of the research content of this paper,and heterogeneity analysis and robustness testing of the regression results from multiple perspectives to eliminate possible unstable factors;Chapter 5 summarizes the conclusions drawn from the empirical analysis and puts forward relevant recommendations.The main results of this paper are as follows through the empirical analysis.(1)Residents’ fertility behavior has a negative impact on Chinese households’ financial asset allocation: for the overall sample,the number of children significantly weakens households’ preferences for financial assets and risky financial asset allocation,while a higher proportion of males among the sex of children also has a negative impact on the probability of risky financial asset allocation.(2)Compared with the number of children,the gender structure of children has a limited impact on household financial asset allocation,which indicates that gender discrimination in China has improved significantly,and the "son preference" among households has been significantly weakened.(3)There are some urban-rural differences in the impact of fertility behavior on household financial asset allocation.In rural areas,households are limited by the education level of the head of household and the total household income,so they do not invest too much in risky assets,but keep most of their assets in the form of deposits or cash,and do not allocate and manage their assets appropriately,so the impact of children’s characteristics on household financial asset allocation,especially risky financial asset allocation,is somewhat weakened.(4)There is a significant difference in the effect of fertility behavior by family income differences: the crowding-out effect of child characteristics on the financial asset allocation decisions of both low-income and high-income families is not significant,but there is a significant constraint on middle-class families.(5)By testing the heterogeneity among "eastern","central" and "western" regions,this paper finds that the asset allocation behavior of households in regions with better economic development and more advanced fertility concepts is more affected by the gender structure of their children.This paper finds that the asset allocation behavior of families in regions with better economic development and more advanced fertility concepts is less influenced by the gender structure of their children.At the end of the paper,we propose policy recommendations for households,financial institutions and the government: First,households should consider their assets,income and future plans to consider their fertility behavior,and allocate their assets in a reasonable and diversified manner.Secondly,major institutions in the financial market should recommend suitable financial products to families according to their different needs,and should also focus on popularizing financial knowledge to the public,especially rural families with a low proportion of financial asset allocation,to increase the financial participation of residents.Finally,the government should actively promote the correct concept of fertility,encourage residents to have children,and focus on improving the income of low-income groups to accelerate the realization of common prosperity;on the other hand,the government should also improve the social security system,improve financial laws and regulations,and continuously promote financial innovation to drive the development of the whole economy and society.There are two main innovations in this paper: First,there are many academic articles on household financial asset allocation,but most of them focus on housing,financial literacy and family structure,and there are few studies from the perspective of residents’ fertility behavior.Secondly,in terms of data this paper also makes a big improvement,many articles currently use data from 2013 and 2015,which are older,and China has been strictly implementing family planning policies before 2016,which has caused greater restrictions on residents’ fertility behavior,while this paper selects the latest 2019 CHFS,which has a stronger data timeliness,and with the country’s liberalization of fertility,in recent years residents fertility behavior is also more liberal,the impact on household financial asset allocation will also have a new change.