长期护理保险对中老年家庭储蓄率的影响:基于预期效应的视角

The Impact of the Long-Term Care Insurance on Savings of the Middle-Aged and Elderly:A Perspective of Expected Effects

基于中国健康与养老追踪调查(CHARLS)2011—2018年的4期面板数据,采用双重差分模型检验了长期护理保险对中老年家庭储蓄率的影响。研究发现,长期护理保险可以起到降低中老年家庭储蓄率、刺激中老年家庭消费的作用,此结论在一系列有效性检验和稳健性检验之下仍然成立。进一步研究发现,长期护理保险降低中老年家庭储蓄率的主要渠道是预期效应,而不是收入效应或支出效应。这意味着大多数中老年家庭在没有实际使用长期护理保险的情况下,就已经产生了足以减弱预防性储蓄动机的预期效应,说明推广长期护理保险是一种低成本的促消费政策。要更大程度上发挥长期护理保险的作用,需要进一步扩大长期护理保险的覆盖面,鼓励居民实际使用长期护理保险,以全方位发挥收入效应、支出效应和预期效应对中老年家庭消费的刺激作用。

Based on the four-period panel data of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study(CHARLS)from 2011 to 2018,this paper tests the impact of long-term care insurance on the savings rate of middle-aged and elderly families using DID model.The study finds that long-term care insurance can reduce the savings rate and stimulate consumption of middle-aged and elderly families,and this conclusion remains valid under a series of validity and robustness tests.Further re⁃search finds that the main channel for long-term care insurance to reduce the savings rate is the ex⁃pected effect,rather than the income effect or expenditure effect.This means that most middle-aged and elderly families have already generated an expected effect,even without actually using long term care insurance.This indicates that promoting long-term care insurance is a low-cost consump⁃tion stimulating policy.The policy effect of long-term care insurance needs to be further expanded in terms of coverage,encouraging residents to actually use long-term care insurance,so as to fully stimulate the consumption of middle-aged and elderly families through income effect,expenditure effect,and expected effect.