Research On The Influence Of Child Care On Household Consumption Expenditure In Urban And Rural China

Since the 21 st century,China has been facing a series of demographic problems such as accelerated aging process,insufficient working-age population and unbalanced population development.In order to achieve a healthy and stable population development,the Third Plenary Session of the 18 th Central Committee in2013 proposed a "single two-child" policy.Subsequently,in 2016,China once again relaxed birth restrictions and implemented a "comprehensive two-child" policy.However,with China's economic and social development and the improvement of people's living standards,the rising cost of raising has become an important reason for the low birth desire of contemporary families.After the implementation of the two-child policy,the birth level is still in a downward stage.Therefore,under the realistic background that the fertility rate in our country continues to decline,this study makes use of detailed household consumption data to probe deeply into the cost of child-rearing and analyze its causes,which can provide reference for further improving the population structure and formulating and implementing the birth encouragement policy in our country in the future.Using the unbalanced panel data of China Labor Force Dynamics Survey(CLDS)in 2014 and 2016 and based on the random effect analysis of instrumental variable method,this study intends to explore in detail the impact of child rearing on household consumption expenditure in urban and rural areas of China.Based on the differences in the number of children and age structure(school-age stage),we will focus on the impact of child rearing on the total household expenditure in urban and rural areas and various sub-items of household expenditure such as food,medical care,education,residential routine,tourism,etc.,with the empirical results of the impact of the number of children rearing on the per capita expenditure of various consumer expenditures as a reference.At the same time,the differences of family consumption expenditure in three different income levels of raising children are investigated.The full text focuses on the differences between urban and rural areas.Based on the empirical results of random effect analysis by instrumental variable method,this study draws the following conclusions: First,raising children will significantly increase the consumption expenditure of urban and rural families,and will have even more impact on rural families and low-income families.For everyadditional child raised by urban families,the total household expenditure will increase by 9.34%,while that of rural families will increase even more,reaching 13.9%.In addition,for urban and rural families with different income levels,there is indeed a heterogeneous response of consumer spending to the number of children raised.Low-income families are the most affected of the three groups of income families.Second,among the various sub-items of expenditure,the education expenditure of urban and rural families is most affected by raising children.For each additional minor child raised,the education expenditure of rural families will increase by133.3%,and the increase of urban families will be even greater,reaching 295.9%,while the expenditure on rigid food and medical care will only increase significantly in rural families.Thirdly,the influence of raising children of different ages on family expenditures is indeed heterogeneous.Raising children aged 12-17(secondary school age)has the greatest influence on family expenditures in urban and rural areas,and the increase in education expenditures at this age is particularly sensitive.Fourth,the increase in the number of children raised will significantly reduce the per capita expenditure level of urban and rural families,which indicates that raising children will have a crowding-out effect on the welfare level of adult family members.At the policy level,it is suggested to take effective measures to effectively reduce the cost of raising children in families,thus stabilizing household consumption and promoting the healthy development of the population.