福利扩张带来了养老保障支出的地区收敛吗?

Does Welfare Expansion Bring about the Regional Convergence of Pension Security Expenditure

进入21世纪以来,我国进入社会政策快速发展阶段,福利扩张能否有效缩小各地福利水平差距成为学术界关注的焦点。论文利用2007—2018年31个省份面板数据分析发现,在福利扩张过程中,我国养老保障支出存在绝对收敛和条件收敛发展趋势,且在考虑经济增长因素后,条件收敛速度明显要快于绝对收敛速度,但在不同地区和不同时段的收敛存在明显差异。从整体收敛形态来看,我国省域养老保障支出满足武川正吾所提出的福利发展“第三条道路”,即在福利扩张过程中,养老保障支出水平同时存在空间绝对收敛和路径依赖两种特征,其中经济增长是促成条件收敛过程的关键变量。另外,受空间相关性影响,我国各地养老保障支出存在俱乐部收敛特征,呈现两极分化趋势。论文为当前加强我国养老保障体系的区域协调治理,实现社会共同富裕的美好愿景提供了善治启示和良策建议。

Since the beginning of the 21st century,China has entered the stage of rapid development of social policies.Whether the welfare expansion can effectively narrow the gap in the level of welfare has become the focus of academic attention.Using the panel data of 31provinces and cities across the country from 2007to 2018,the paper found that in the process of welfare expansion,Chinese pension security expenditure has a trend of absolute convergence and conditional convergence,and after considering the economic growth factor,the conditional convergence rate is significantly faster than the absolute convergence rate,but there will be significant differences in the convergence state in different regions and different periods.From the perspective of the overall convergence pattern,Chinese provincial old-age security expenditure meets the“third path”of welfare development proposed by Masao Takegawa,that is,in the process of welfare expansion,the level of old-age security expenditure has two characteristics:absolute convergence in space and path dependence,in which economic growth is the key variable in the process of promoting conditional convergence.In addition,influenced by the spatial correlation,the level of pension security expenditure in various regions of China exhibit the characteristics of club convergence,which shows apolarization trend.The paper provides good governance inspiration and good policy suggestions for strengthening the regional coordinated governance of China's pension security system and realizing the vision of common prosperity.