人口老龄化与家庭创业决策

Population Aging and Entrepreneurship in the Households

文章利用中国家庭金融调查数据,从年龄和人口结构两个方面分析人口老龄化对家庭创业决策的影响。研究发现,户主年龄与家庭创业存在倒"U"形关系,其拐点出现在31岁;老年人口越多的家庭参与创业的可能性越低,家庭老年人口比重提高1个标准差会导致创业概率下降1%左右。从影响机制看,人口老龄化通过减少家庭社会交往和降低家庭风险承受能力等渠道抑制家庭创业。以商业保险购买为代表的家庭自我保险行为比参加具有强制性的社会保险计划更能降低人口老龄化对家庭创业的负面影响,提高家庭的创业概率。文章认为,通过政策设计缓解家庭的养老压力,发展和完善商业保险市场,分散家庭的创业风险,有利于促进创业。

This paper uses the China Household Finance Survey data to study the impact of population aging on household entrepreneurial decisions, from the perspectives of household head’s age and age structure of household members. It finds that there is a significant inverted U-shaped relationship between household head’s age and entrepreneurship, with the turning point at around the age of 31. Households with more elderly people are less likely to participate in entrepreneurship, and an increase by one standard deviation in the proportion of the elderly will reduce the probability of entrepreneurship by about 1%. The mechanism may be that aging reduces household social communication and risk preference, and it has a negative impact on entrepreneurship. The self-insurance behavior of households, represented by commercial insurance purchases, can reduce the negative impact of aging on household entrepreneurship and increase the probability of entrepreneurship. This paper argues that it will help promote entrepreneurship through alleviating the pension pressure on households, and developing the commercial insurance market to disperse the risk of household entrepreneurship.