预期寿命对中国家户储蓄和健康投资行为的影响

Impact of Life Expectancy on China’s Household Savings and Health Investment

本文基于两期世代交替模型分析了预期寿命对家户储蓄和健康投资支出的双重影响,并利用2004—2009年我国城镇住户调查数据和全国疾病监测系统死因监测数据库,采用固定效应法和工具变量法对理论模型所推导出来的假说进行实证检验。理论模型表明,预期寿命在通过改变贴现因子影响年轻人储蓄的同时,也会影响他们的健康投资。当人们预期未来老年时期的寿命水平较低时,有更强的激励在年轻时期增加健康投资支出。实证结果表明,当城市层面的平均预期寿命上升时,个体家户的储蓄会显著增加,而家户健康投资支出则会显著降低,与理论模型预测基本一致。

This paper constructs a two-period overlapping generations model to study the impact of life expectancy on household savings and health investment,and then empirically tests the model results with fixed-effect models and instrumental variable methods,based on data of 2004-2009 China Urban Household Survey and China National Diseases Surveillance Points.The theoretical model shows that by modifying the individual lifecycle discounting factor,the life expectancy affects not only the savings of the young people,but also their health investment.When the young expect lower life expectancy at old age,they have stronger incentive to increase present heath investment.Consistent with the theoretical prediction,empirical results show that when the life expectancy at the city level increases,the savings of individual households will significantly increase and the household health investment expenditure will significantly decline.