家庭金融参与中的信任重建——来自农村社会养老保险的证据

Rebuilding Trust in Household Financial Participation:A Natural Experiment from China’s Rural Social Pension Insurance

信任是交易和合作的基础,对家庭金融参与具有重要影响。本文使用中国健康与养老追踪调查2011—2018年四期面板数据,以农村社会养老保险的制度变革作为自然实验,研究信任对家庭金融参与的影响及其重建机制。实证发现,由于老农保未能兑现承诺的储蓄回报和养老金待遇,相比未参加过老农保的家庭,老农保参加家庭在新农保设立初期的参加概率降低10.5个百分点;老农保缴费越多,领取越少,参加新农保的可能性越低。随着新农保的推广,农村社会养老保险制度的信任逐渐得到重建:参加过老农保的家庭参与新农保的可能性逐年上升,并最终比没有参加过老农保的家庭高出2.94个百分点。地区法治水平、政府透明度和公共服务水平,农村社会养老保险制度的信息传递和有效承诺是重建信任的重要机制,家庭自身的教育水平和信任偏好也有助于缓解先期信任方面的负面影响。本文对于理解信任重建和家庭金融参与具有重要的理论和政策涵义。

Trust is the foundation of business transactions and cooperation,and is one of the key determinants of households’financial participation.However,there is very little literature about the changes of trust.From the microeconomic perspective,trust is defined as the faith of counterparties’contract commitment and implementation.It is a subjective estimation to future uncertainties in business and financial transactions.Trust is particularly important when business transactions are accomplished over a long period of time,for example,insurance,rather than immediate exchanges of rights and obligations.How is trust weakened?Whether and how can trust be rebuilt?In this paper,we answer these questions by investigating the process of trust destruction and reconstruction in households’financial participation and mechanisms to rebuild trust.The policy change of China’s rural social pension insurance system offers a unique natural experiment for identifying the trust destruction and reconstruction,and their impact on households’financial participation.China’s rural social pension insurance system was developed and expanded during 1991-1999.It was a fully funded system purely based on individual contributions.Due to unsustainable operation,and local governments failed to meet their financial commitment concerning savings returns and pensions afterwards,it was suspended in 1999.Since 2009,China has developed the new rural social pension insurance system to replace the old one,which was significantly improved in both sustainability and operational efficiency.Until 2017,the new rural social pension insurance and the later basic old-age pension for urban and rural residents have enrolled 491 million rural residents on voluntary basis,and its participating rate has exceeded 80%.According to China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey from 2011 to 2018,we show that households that participated in the old rural social pension insurance were 10.5 percentage points lower than non-participants in the early stage of new rural social pension insurance.Moreover,the higher a household’s contribution to the old rural social pension insurance,the fewer pensions that it received from the old rural social pension insurance system,and the less likely the household would participate in the new rural social pension insurance.With the promotion of the new rural social pension insurance,the trust in the rural social pension insurance system is rebuilt gradually.The probability for households who have participated in the old rural social pension insurance to participate in the new one increased year by year,and eventually exceeded the probability of non-participants by 2.94 percentage points.The results are robust to alternative indexes of insurance participation and the individual-level sample,and cannot be explained by wealth effect,risk preference,risk perception,compulsory participation,and institutional transition.We present effective mechanisms and channels for rebuilding trust.We show that the rule of law,the transparency of governance,the level of public services,and the information and effective commitment of the rural social pension insurance system are effective channels to rebuilt trust and improve the participation in social pension insurance.Additional results show that households’educational level and trust preference also mitigate the impact of the broken trust.We contribute to the literature in three ways.(1)Existing studies focus on the impact of trust,in a static sense,on households’financial behaviors,financial development and economic growth,but rarely involve the dynamic impact of trust.We explore,for the first time,a single policy reform to empirically document the process of trust destruction and reconstruction.(2)Classical microeconomics predicts that a rational decision maker should maximize his/her expected utility based on all attainable information especially when making financial decisions.It remains an interesting question from both rational and behavioral perspectives to investigate whether,why,and how personal experience would affect a household’s financial decision.This paper provides a new perspective of trust for understanding the impact of individual experience on household financial decisions.(3)We offer effective mechanisms and channels for rebuilding trust and improving households’financial participation,which yields important policy implications to future rural social pension insurance reforms.Policymakers and financial managers should honor every promise and commitment to minimize the chance of breaking faith,be aware of the consequences of breaking faith,and sufficiently take its economic and social costs into account.Households will not lose the trust permanently in certain systems,institutions,or financial products because of one breach-of-faith case,rather,the weakened trust can be rebuilt and reduced financial participation can be improved by efforts of institutions through effective channels,like our presented process from the old to the new rural social pension insurance systems.