"Multi-Track" Pension Insurances,System Integration Reform And Household Consumption

Under the background of the new development pattern of "double circulation",it is of great significance to comprehensively promote consumption and enhance consumption momentum for China to step into a new stage of development.The "14th Five-Year Plan" states that the problem of my country’s unbalanced and insufficient development is still prominent,the gap between urban and rural regional development and income distribution is large,and there are weaknesses in ensuring people’s wellbeing.There are significant differences in consumer spending in groups,urban and rural areas and regions.There is a significant gap in consumption expenditure in the dimensions of groups,urban and rural areas,and regions in my country’s resident consumption.This is not conducive to enhancing the basic role of consumption in economic development,and it is also not conducive to the improvement of residents’happiness and economic welfare.At the same time,it has established the world’s largest old-age security network,realizing full coverage of the old-age insurance system in China.However,the system is seriously "fragmented",which is manifested as institutional segmentation horizontally and low pooling level vertically.In view of different groups,the following pension insurance systems has been established in China:organ and public institution pension,urban enterprise employee pension and urban and rural residents social pension.Different pension insurance systems have great differences in financing mode,payment standard,fiscal subsidy,calculation and payment method and treatment adjustment,and ultimately lead to a great gap in pension of insured families relying on different pension insurance systems.In order to eliminate the "fragmentation" of the endowment insurance system,In February 2014,the "new Rural insurance system" and the "urban residence insurance system" were merged,and named the basic old-age insurance system for urban and rural residents,realizing the equality of social old-age insurance rights for urban and rural residents.In January 2015,The State Council decided to carry out nationwide reform of the old-age insurance system in government offices and public institutions,implemented the same old-age insurance system model as enterprise employees,and the dual-track urban pension system has been officially abolished at the institutional level.In the new era,people pay more attention to eliminating inequity in economic life,including old-age security and consumption.Therefore,combining China’s actual and consumption economic theory.according to the research perspective combining macro and micro,with the "multi-track " pension as the starting point,using macro statistics data and China Household Finance Survey(CHFS),this dissertation mainly focus on the impact of "multi-track" pension and system integration reform on household consumption(including consumption level and consumption gap).The full text includes nine chapters in total,research content and conclusions of each chapter are progressive.The conclusions at the macro and micro levels confirm each other,which improves the credibility and robustness of the research.The specific research contents and findings are as follows.At the macro level,based on the overlapping generation model,SYS-GMM model and Chinese provincial panel data,this paper theoretically and empirically studies the impact of pension development(including replacement rate and coverage rate)and institutional integration reform on household consumption,and conducts the difference analysis of the consumption effects of urban occupational insurance and urban and rural residential insurance.The results show that:first,improving the pension replacement rate and coverage rate of urban employment insurance can significantly promote the consumption of urban residents,and improving the coverage rate of urban and rural social insurance can significantly promote the consumption of rural residents.Second,due to the gap in the level of old-age insurance,the consumption effect of urban occupational insurance is stronger than that of urban-rural residential insurance,which has exacerbated the consumption gap between urban and rural residents.Third,the integration of urban and rural residents’ endowment insurance system has strengthened the promotion of coverage to rural residents’ consumption.At the micro level,this dissertation mainly focus on the impact of the "multi-track"pension and system integration reform on household consumption(Chapter 5 and 6),as well as the impact on household consumption gap(Chapter 7 and 8).Firstly,this article theoretically analyzes the impact of pension wealth on household consumption and savings rate,measures the pension wealth of households covered by the New Rural Insurance.Based on the three-phase CHFS panel data and the instrumental variable method(Ⅳ)validate the theoretical model.And make a comparative analysis with "enterprise occupational insurance".The results show that:pension wealth through the "wealth substitution effect" and reducing the risk of pension income,significantly increase rural household consumption and reduce household saving rate.Further analysis found that,first,the enterprise employment insurance is more conducive to reducing the saving rate of the insured households and promoting household consumption than the new rural insurance.Second,the new rural insurance played a role of "sending charcoal in the snow" in poverty alleviation,and was able to increase the consumption level of poor and poorly-healthy families.Third,the new rural insurance could alleviate the inhibitory effect of extended life expectancy on household consumption.Fourth,the impact of pension wealth on rural household consumption is heterogeneous in terms of age.Secondly,taking the reform of the pension insurance system of government agencies and institutions as an example,based on The Certainty Equivalence Model,the Precautionary Savings Model and the PSM-DID method,the impact of institutional integration reform on household saving rate and consumption theoretically and empirically.The results show that:by changing family pension expectations and increasing the risk of family pension in the future,the reform has raised the saving rate of the insured households and reduced the per capita consumption of the households.In terms of consumption pattern,the reform has mainly reduced the food,clothing and entertainment consumption of the insured families.The heterogeneity analysis shows that,the impact of the reform on the households with low wealth,female,higher education level,aged 40-50 years old and families in western provinces are greater.The placebo test and robustness test from various angles all support the above conclusion.Thirdly,based on the current situation of the coexistence of "multi-track" pension system and household consumption inequality in China,the relative deprivation index of household consumption is introduced to empirically analyze the impact of the "multitrack" pension on the relative deprivation of household consumption from the micro level,and analyze the moderating effect of the pension integration reform.The results show that:the imbalance in pensions caused by the "multi-track system" has significantly expanded relative deprivation of household consumption.The impact mechanism is that different pension systems have great differences in reducing the relative deprivation of household income,which exacerbates the relative deprivation of household consumption.The relationship between "multi-track" pensions and relative deprivation of consumption will also vary depending on the type of consumption,family characteristics,and regional characteristics.In addition,the "multi-track"pension imbalance has aggravated the relative deprivation of consumption by nonretirees through the expected effect;the unification of the pension insurance system has played a regulatory role and can weaken this aggravating effect.Fourthly,through empirical analysis,the level and evolution trend of household consumption gap caused by "multi-track" pension system are measured.The results show that:the "multi-track" pension has significantly caused the consumption gap among different insured families.Compared with the new rural insurance,urban social insurance,enterprise employee endowment insurance,and government and public institutions endowment insurance models have significantly increased household per capita consumption expenditure by 6.2%,13.3%,and 17.5%,respectively.For retired families,the impact mechanism is "income effect",for non-retired families,the impact mechanism is "expected effect".Affected by the merger of the pension insurance system for urban and rural residents in 2014,the consumption gap between the rural and urban insured households has shown a decreasing trend over time;affected by the reform of endowment insurance system for government agencies and institutions in 2015,the consumption gap between insured households of enterprise occupational insurance and government agencies and institutions tends to be stable.Compared with the existing research,the main contributions of this dissertation are:in terms of research perspective,macro and micro research are combined,with provincial and household as research units respectively.We have established a research framework for the "multi-track" pension,system integration reform and household consumption(including consumption level and consumption gap).In addition,based on the "multi-track" pension imbalance,we have explained the consumption inequality of Chinese elderly retirement households,make up for the lack of related research.In terms of theoretical research,first,we analyze the impact of pension insurance development and institutional integration reform on macro household consumption based on the overlapping generation model,and analyze the effect of pension system integration reform on micro household consumption(saving rate)based on the deterministic equivalence model and the precautionary savings model.This will lay a theoretical foundation for subsequent research on the impact of pension system reform on household consumption.Second,the Theil index decomposition method is used to innovatively measure the pension imbalance among groups of insured families with different types of systems,and the individual relative deprivation index is introduced into the analysis framework,from a micro perspective,we reveal the aggravating effect of "multi-track" pension on the relative deprivation of household consumption.In terms of research findings,the core findings confirmed by this dissertation from multiple perspectives are:"multi-track" pension has widened the household consumption gap,and the reform of the system integration is conducive to reducing the "multi-track"pension imbalance and household consumption gap.This provides theoretical and empirical support for reducing household consumption inequality and improving the integration of pension systems.This dissertation can make up for the lack of relevant research on the impact of"multi-track" pension and system integration reform on household consumption(including consumption level and consumption gap)from research perspectives,theoretical research and research findings.In practice,it can provide policy reference for alleviating the "contradiction between the people’s growing need for a better life and unbalanced and inadequate development",narrowing the pension gap among different insured households,reducing residents’ consumption inequality,and improving the reform of pension insurance system integration.Thereby enhancing residents’ well-being and economic welfare,and enhancing the fundamental role of consumption in economic development.