子女数量与家庭购房:分化与选择

The Number of Children and Home Purchase:Divergence and Choice

“全面二孩”政策颁布后,中国家庭在生育行为上有了更大的选择空间。但“全面二孩”政策在现实中遇冷,并未达到理想预期。同时,房价快速攀升也带来收入与住房不平等问题。收入与住房不平等是否会带来生育不平等,这是一个在文献中鲜被关注却具有现实意义的问题。首先,本文通过建立生命周期模型与数值模拟发现,低收入家庭无法承担孩子的养育成本以及住房购买费用,既生不起孩子也买不起房子;中等收入家庭因高昂的孩子养育成本和住房价格而受到预算约束,只能在生孩子与买房子之间二选一;高收入家庭不受约束,可以进行生育与购房的双重优化。其次,本文使用2014年、2016年和2018年中国家庭追踪调查数据,利用“全面二孩”政策缓解家庭决策的内生性,对理论模型进行实证检验。结果表明,“全面二孩”政策实施前拥有住房能够显著提高所有家庭生育二孩的概率,但对于中低收入家庭来说,生育二孩会降低其购房数量及新增购房概率;而对于高收入家庭来说,生育二孩会显著提高其购房数量及新增购房概率。

The universal two-child policy gives Chinese parents more freedom in making fertility choices,but the policy was not effective and did not meet the expectations.At the same time,the rapid rise in housing prices has led to income and housing inequality.Whether income and housing inequality leads to inequality in fertility is a question that is important but overlooked in existing literature.First,we developed a simple life-cycle model and found through simulations that low-and middle-income households were subject to budget constraints due to high child-raising costs and housing prices,so they could only choose between having children and buying a home;high-income households were not constrained and could choose both.Then we used the updated data from CFPS 2014,2016 and 2018,used the universal two-child policy to ease the endogeneity issue of household decision-making,and conducted empirical tests on the theoretical model.The empirical results confirm the theoretical findings.