代际收入流动与居民储蓄行为:中国居民家庭高储蓄率的另一种解释

Intergenerational Mobility and Household Saving Behavior: A New Explanation for the High Saving Rate of Chinese Households

中国的高储蓄率问题一直备受关注。本文从代际收入流动视角为居民高储蓄率提供了另一种解释。通过构建两代收入-储蓄模型,从理论上证实了代际收入弹性与储蓄率之间的负相关关系。其机制在于,父代为保证子代的社会地位,会同时增加对子代的人力资本投资和遗赠,从而推高家庭储蓄率。基于CHIP1995-2013年城镇数据的实证分析,发现代际收入弹性每下降1个百分点,平均而言,储蓄率对应提高0.10个百分点,能解释中国1995-2007年间家庭储蓄率变动的6.67%。而在2007-2013年间,代际收入弹性对家庭储蓄率的影响基本可以忽略。本文的研究结论表明,对低收入家庭人力资本投入的转移支付政策能有效弥补家庭投入的不足,从而在缩小代际收入差距的同时促进家庭消费,起到扩大内需的作用。

The phenomenon of China’s high saving rates has received wide attention.This paper provides another explanation based on intergenerational mobility.We build a two-generation income saving model to testify the negative relationship between intergenerational elasticity of income and saving rates.The mechanism is that,in order to ensure the social status of their children,the father will promote households saving rates by increasing human capital investment for children and bequest.Using the urban data of CHIP 1995-2013,we find that every 1%decrease in intergenerational income elasticity is associated with 0.10%increase of saving rates,which can explain 6.67%of the change in China’s household saving rate from 1995 to 2007.From 2007 to 2013,the impact of intergenerational income elasticity on household savings rate can be ignored.The results indicate that the transfer payment policy of human capital investment of low-income families can effectively make up for the lack of family investment,so as to reduce the intergenerational income gap and promote household consumption,which plays a role in expanding domestic demand.