预期寿命延长与农村居民储蓄率——基于CHIP2013农户样本的研究

Longer Life Expectancy and Rural Household Savings Rate: Evidence from China Household Income Project-2013

随着社会经济的发展,中国人均预期寿命显著增长。根据生命周期理论,预期寿命的延长将给居民储蓄率带来重要影响,但是现有研究并没有达成一致结论。由于中国城乡二元经济的巨大差异,预期寿命的延长对城镇和农村储蓄率的影响方向不同:预期寿命的延长意味着城镇居民退休后存活的时间更长,从而工作期间需要更多储蓄,以应对退休后更长时间的收入下降,但农民不面临退休以及退休后收入急剧下降的情况,预期寿命的延长会提高他们的健康水平,进而提高其劳动生产率和收入水平,同时还会延长工作期,这些都会降低家庭储蓄率。我们基于CHIP2013的农户数据进行研究发现:第一,县级人口的预期寿命增长显著降低了农户的家庭储蓄率;第二,统计发现,农民60岁以后的劳动时间并不会急剧下降,甚至到了70岁,仍每年平均劳动4.55个月,相当于30-40岁劳动力年均劳动时间(8.83个月)的52%;第三,预期寿命的延长显著改善了所有农民的健康水平。

With the fast development of economy in China, life expectancy also increases sharply. According to life cycle theory, life expectancy has very important effect on savings rate. Present studies, however, does not arrive at the same conclusion. This paper argues that, life expectancy has different relationship with household savings rate for rural and urban households because of the rural-urban divide socio-economic system in China. Longer life expectancy indicates that urban households should save more during before retirement so as to smooth the consumption after retiring with much lower incomes. But in China, peasants do not need to retire after 55 or 60 years old. Longer life expectancy suggests longer working period and better health condition for peasants, which all has positive effect on income. As result, rural households do not need to save too much compared with urban households. Employing rural household survey data from CHIP 2013, empirical test shows that life expectancy has negative effect on rural household savings rate. Those old peasants still have a relative long working time and life expectancy has significant positive effect on all peasants’ health conditions. These results can help understand the determinants of the downturn of rural households’ savings rate during the past two decades and also provides important implication to the making of long-term economic growth and consumption promotion policies in China.