Public pension and household saving: evidence from China

Arbeitspapier

We relate household saving to pension reform, to explain the high household saving rates in urban China from a new perspective. We use the exogenous - policy induced - variation in pension wealth to explicitly estimate the impact of pension wealth on household saving, and obtain a significant offset effect of pension wealth on household saving. Our estimations show that pension reform boosted the household saving rate in 1999 by about 6 percentage points for cohort aged 25-29 and by about 3 percentage points for cohort aged 50-59. Our results also indicate that declining pension wealth reduces expenditure on education and health more than on other consumption items.

Object Details

• ISBN: 978-952-462-959-1
• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: BOFIT Discussion Papers ; No. 2/2009

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents: Household ; Social Security and Public Pensions ; Socialist Institutions and Their Transitions: Public Economics
• Subject: pensions ; pension reform ; household savings rate ; China

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Feng, Jin ; He, Lixin ; Sato, Hiroshi
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Bank of Finland, Institute for Economies in Transition (BOFIT)
• (where): Helsinki
• (when): 2009

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/212646
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:41 AM CET