老龄化与家庭金融脆弱性——数字金融赋能下的应对路径研究

Aging and Household Financial Fragility: Research on the Response Path under the Enabling of Fintech

老龄化是当前社会面临的重要挑战,给家庭金融状况带来的改变使部分家庭呈现出脆弱性特征。数字金融的发展缓解了家庭的金融抑制,为化解此类风险提供了路径。本文使用中国家庭追踪调查(CFPS)数据与数字金融指标,通过理论推理与实证检验全面考察了老龄化对家庭金融脆弱性的影响,并重点分析了数字金融如何有助于化解老龄化对家庭金融脆弱性的负面影响。研究发现:老龄化提升了家庭面临的金融风险,降低了家庭应对金融风险的能力,显著增加了家庭金融脆弱的发生概率;老龄化家庭对数字金融的深度使用主要通过提高家庭财产性收入缓解了老龄化对家庭金融脆弱的负向冲击,是应对老龄化问题的有效路径。进一步研究发现,老龄化对女性户主、没有独立产权住房家庭、没有购买商业保险家庭的负向作用更大,数字金融与之对应的缓解作用也更强。本文为全面认识老龄化对家庭应对风险能力的影响提供了补充,也提供了基于数字金融化解老龄化危机的路径。

Aging is an important challenge facing the current society, and the changes it brought make some households appear vulnerable. The development of Fintech has eased the financial repression of households and provided a path to resolve such risks. This paper comprehensively examines the impact of aging on household financial fragility through theoretical reasoning and empirical testing using data from CFPS, and mainly focuses on how Fintech can help resolve the impact of aging on household financial fragility. It is found that aging increases the financial risks faced by families, reduces the ability of families to deal with financial risks, and significantly increases the probability of household financial fragility. The deep use of Fintech by aging families mainly alleviates the negative impact of aging on the vulnerability of family finance by improving family property income, which is an effective way to deal with the aging problem. Further research found that aging has a greater negative effect on female heads of households, households without independent housing, and households without commercial insurance, and the corresponding mitigating effect of Fintech is also stronger. This paper complements a comprehensive understanding of the impact of ageing on households’ ability to cope with risk and provides evidence for the use of Fintech to address the ageing crisis.