Population Policies, Demographic Structural Changes, and the Chinese Household Saving Puzzle

Suqin Ge, Dennis Yang and Junsen Zhang

No 7026, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Using combined data from population censuses and Urban Household Surveys, we study the effects of demographic structural changes on the rise in household saving in China. Variations in fines across provinces on unauthorized births under the one-child policy and in cohort-specific fertility influenced by the implementation of population control policies are exploited to facilitate identification. We find evidence that older households with a reduced number of adult children save more because of old-age security concerns, middle-aged households experience an increase in saving due to the lighter burden of dependent children, and younger households save more because of having fewer siblings to share the responsibility of parental care. These findings lend support to a simple economic model in which the effects of population control policies are investigated in the context of household saving decisions in China.

Keywords: demographic structure; one-child policy; household saving; cohort analysis; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E21 J11 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 48 pages
Date: 2012-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-cna, nep-dem and nep-tra
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

Published - published in: European Economic Review, 2018, 101, 181 - 209

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp7026.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Population policies, demographic structural changes, and the Chinese household saving puzzle (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7026

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().