The Impacts Of The New Rural Pension Program

The establishment of the New Rural Social Pension Program(NSPP)aims to improve China's old-age security system and promote the equalization of public services between urban and rural areas(URA).Previous research has shown that NSPP is not only propitious to solving the endowment problems of mass farmers,but also achieving the state's policy objectives including expanding consumer demand,boosting economic growth,improving the living standards of rural residents,and narrowing the gap between URA.However,from the perspective of policy effects,these studies are not comprehensive,especially the lackness of analyzing symbolic influence of NSPP.Based on survey data of DongTai City,Jiangsu Province,this paper takes advantage of two major changes including(1)the establishment of NAI and(2)the augment in pension to explore tangible and symbolic effects of NSPP to make an evaluation of the effcets of NSPP from tangible and symbolic perspectives.In summary,this paper makes the following contributions:In the study of the tangible effects of NSPP,this paper finds that the new rural social pension program promotes the consumption level of rural elderly.This paper first investigates the consumption shifts of the elderly by establishing a random effective model(REM)based on the panel data of year 2008 and 2012,our experiment result shows that NSPP significantly promotes consumption of the elderly,the consumption amount is 51.6%higher under unsured when compared to uninsured.Afterly,for investigating the marginal effect of pension in consumption,another REM established based on the three-year data of 2012,2014 and 2016,it empirically shows that when pension increases by 1%,consumption of the rural elderly increases significantly by 0.682%.Finally,we use savings as an alternative to consumption to verify the robustness of the empirical results in addition.In the study of the symbolic effects of NSPP,the survey finds that the elderly in rural areas perceived humanistic care and fairness from NSPP to a certain extent,it is inevitable that other happiness like security and achievement will follow while there are also other problems that could reduce the subjective perception of the elderly.This paper designs specific indicators for measuring fairness and humanistic care combining with institutional design,management services and institutional results,in addition to that,the degree of understanding and identity are both used as the evaluating indicators based on the data of year 2017 in this experiment.The survey finds that the elderly in rural areas perceived humanistic care and fairness from NSPP to a certain extent,it is inevitable that other happiness like security and achievement will follow while there are also other problems that could reduce the subjective perception of the elderly.Specifically,basic pensions and other rules make the elderly feel love from the government,they are satisfied with the convenience of management services,they also agree that the NSPP could reduce their worries about endowment and make their family relations more harmonious.However,there are many institutional regulations that make them do not understand or even misunderstand the grades of contributions and the composition of pension benefits.In terms of fairness perception,the rural elderly affirm the fairmess of classification rule related to payment grades,they commend the government for treating everyone fairly in management services,on the other hand,they do not agree with the URA fairness of NSPP's contribution in enabling elderly people to achieve the equal retirement rights,reduce the income gap and promote the integration.As long as we want to make NSPP develops the full effects,our government departments should strengthen policy advocacy,improve pensions for participants,change the difference treatments between URA residents and enhance the level of management services.