中国家庭存在退休者消费之谜吗?——基于CHARLS数据的实证检验

Does Retirement Consumption Puzzle Exist in China?An Empirical Test of CHARLS

本文运用中国健康与养老追踪调查(CHARLS)数据,将法定退休年龄作为消费者生命周期中的一个外生间断,在断点回归的框架下估计退休对消费的影响。户主退休对家庭消费在总量上具有微弱的抑制效应,分类消费项目支出有升有降,消费结构发生调整。与工作有关的项目或可用于家庭生产的项目开销显著减少,其中,与工作相关的消费显著减少38.8%,对家政服务的消费显著下降13.1%~13.8%;家庭日常非耐用品的消费支出却显著增加约40%,主要是由于退休后家庭食物开支增加;退休对医疗消费具有一定的促进作用,但效果不明显;休闲和文化娱乐方面的消费随着劳动者的退休而明显增加。中国劳动者退休后消费开支的下降并不构成"谜"。

Taking advantage of the data from China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study(CHARLS),we estimate the impact of retirement on categories of household expenditures under the framework of regression discontinuity design by treating China's mandatory retirement age as an exogenous cutoff point in the lifecycle of a typical individual.The findings suggest that retirement induces a set of structural adjustments for household expenditures:retirement significantly reduces work-related and home-production-substituted expenditures by 38.8 percent and 13.1-13.8 percent respectively,while it has remarkable stimulating effects on other non-durable expenditures by about 40 percent which partly due to expenditures on food consumed at home increased;retirement has a negligible positive impact on health care expenditure while it causes recreational consumptions and entertainment expenditures increasing significantly.As a conclusion,there is little evidence suggesting the retirement consumption puzzle exists in China.