家庭隔代抚养文化、延迟退休年龄与劳动力供给

Family Grandparenting Culture,Postponing Retirement Age and Labor Supply

实施渐进式延迟法定退休年龄会如何改变新发展阶段中国劳动力供给的长期趋势?本文实证发现中国家庭隔代抚养提高了家庭生育率和女性劳动供给,这意味着延迟退休年龄可能通过家庭隔代抚养渠道影响劳动力供给。本文在内生人口和经济增长的动态一般均衡模型中引入了家庭隔代抚养文化,发现延迟退休年龄后,家庭隔代抚养程度和年轻人劳动供给下降。劳动力数量增长速度的变化方向取决于生育成本的家庭隔代抚养弹性。如果生育成本的家庭隔代抚养弹性较高,那么劳动力数量增长速度将降低,反之亦然。劳动力质量增长速度的变化方向取决于生育时间成本。延迟退休年龄提高了年轻人的生育时间成本,在生育数量和质量替代关系的作用下,劳动力质量增长速度将提高。本文创新之处是将研究前沿的统一增长理论与中国特色的家庭隔代抚养文化结合,突出了中国传统文化的经济影响,从新的视角拓展了内生人口和经济增长理论研究,对研判中国延迟退休年龄政策效应也有重要参考意义。

To deal with the aging problem,fully utilize the human resource,and achieve the sustainable development of the social security system,China will gradually delay the retirement age.Postponing retirement not only directly increases the labor supply of the old people,but also deeply affects the young people’s choices of savings,fertility,education and labor supply.Different from other countries that have delayed the retirement age,grandparenting prevails across Chinese families.Grandparenting means that the old people help their children raising their grandchildren,which is a novel institution within the family with Chinese characteristics.This article studies the long-run effect of postponing retirement on labor supply in the environment that incorporates the culture of grandparenting,which may offer a new perspective of policy evaluation of China’s retirement postponing.We first conduct empirical studies with the household-level data from China Family Panel Studies(CFPS).We find that the grandparenting culture significantly increases the fertility rate and female labor supply in Chinese families.On average,families with children mainly raised by their grandparents have 0.228 more children than other families,which means their fertility rates are around 16%higher.Mothers from these families enter the labor market with about 11.5%higher probability,and work about nine more hours per week.Therefore,postponing retirement may actually affect the labor supply by the mechanism of grandparenting in China.We then build a dynamic general equilibrium model with endogenous population growth and economic growth.On one hand,the model incorporates the quntity-quality trade off of children,which plays an important role in the unified growth model and is supported by several empirical studies on Chinese families.On the other hand,the model also incorporates the grandparenting culture which is manifested by the old people caring about their grandchildren.Grandparenting takes the old people’s leisure time,but also deceases the young people’s time cost of fertility,which in turn affects their choices of the quantity and quality of children.The old people face such trade-off and determine the degree of grandparenting.Therefore,grandparenting can be affected by economic factors or policies,and potentially one of them is the retirement postponing policy.We find that when the government delays the retirement age,the degree of grandparenting and the young people’s labor supply decreases.If the mandatory retirement age is low,the average time of grandparenting for each child also falls,which increases the time cost of fertility.Postponing retirement will affect the quantity and quality growth of labor supply by the mechanism of price effect and income affect.When the mandatory retirement age is low and the retirement is postponed,the direction of the change in the quantity growth of labor supply depends on the elasticity of fertility cost with respect to the family’s grandparenting.If the elasticity is high,then the price effect dominates,and the quantity of labor supply grows slower as the fertility cost rises faster.The income effect dominates,and the quantity of labor supply grows faster because of faster income growth.The quality growth of labor supply depends on the time cost of fertility,and young people’time cost of fertility is increased by delaying the retirement age.The income effect always dominates,making the quality of labor supply increases faster through the quntity-quality trade off of children.This article combines the unified growth theory with China’s grandparenting culture to study the long-run effect of postponing retirement on labor supply,and highlights the economic influence of China’s traditional culture.It provides following policy implications for China’s gradual delay of retirement age to solve the aging problem and utilize the human resource.First,it is necessary to evaluate the effect of postponing retirement on labor supply from a more comprehensive perspective,which includes not only the direct effect of increasing the labor supply of the old people,but also the indirect effect of family grandparenting on the young people’s fertility,education and labor supply.Second,while promoting the multi-level social security system,it is necessary to notice that the related policy may impact the family’s grendparenting,so our findings may also apply to social security policies.Third,the public policies for population and education should be adjusted along with the retirement postponing policy to abate the negative effect of faded grandparenting on labor supply.Fourth,policies such as delaying the retirement age have different effects on different types of families.For low-income families,especially relatively poor families,measures should be taken to improve their social security level,and more attention should be paid to the impact of retirement,pension and fertility policy adjustment on their fertility and education costs.