公共服务均等化视角下中国养老保障方式与路径选择——居家养老服务保障的优势与发展路径

当前,中国老龄化危机严重,如何解决养老问题成为社会难点.以公共服务均等化理论为视角,以公共服务均等化的要素作为目前养老方式的评价指标,对比三种养老模式的优缺点,得出居家养老是实现养老服务均等化最优路径.同时,文章统计了老年人对居家养老服务的需求情况,结果显示,需求率高达79.47％.在研究结论的基础上,提出了以发展居家养老来解决中国养老问题的路径,以居家养老为主实现养老保障公共服务均等化,保障了我国老龄社会阶段的健康、稳定、持续发展,推动社会的进步.大力推进居家养老服务保障为主的养老服务保障均等化建设是我国转型期服务型政府建构的重要举措.     

Is care by grandparents or parents better for children's non-cognitive skills? Evidence on locus of control from China

This study investigates the effect of grandparental involvement in childcare on children's locus of control (LOC), which is an important non-cognitive skill that affects children's future development. We use data from the China Family Panel Studies, which is a nationally representative survey, and employ instrumental variables to address the endogeneity of family childcare choice. We find that children with grandparental care have more external LOC than children in the sole care of their parents do; that is, they are more likely to attribute individual success to external factors, such as luck, fate, and family background. This finding is robust to different measures of grandparental involvement in childcare and different model specifications, as well as a minor violation of the exclusion restriction of the instruments. We further examine the potential mechanisms underlying this effect. Grandparents have more external LOC than parents do, which can affect children's LOC through intergenerational transmission of LOC. Their parenting attitudes and styles are also different from parents' in that grandparents take less responsibility for children's academic performance than parents do and are less strict with children. In addition, grandparental care induces adverse effects on children's family environment.     

COVID-19 and the employment gender gap in Japan

This paper examines how the COVID-19 pandemic affected female employment in Japan. Our estimates indicate that the employment rate of married women with children decreased by 3.5 percentage points, while that of those without children decreased by only 0.3 percentage points, implying that increased childcare responsibilities caused a sharp decline in mothers’ employment. Further, mothers who left or lost their jobs appear to have dropped out of the labor force even several months after school reopening. In contrast to women, the employment rate of married men with children was not affected, which hindered progress in narrowing the employment gender gap.     

Impact of Childcare and Eldercare on Off‐farm Activities in Rural China

Using individual data collected in rural China and adopting Heckman's two‐step function, we examined the impact of childcare and eldercare on laborers' off‐farm activities. Our study finds that having school‐aged children has a negative impact on rural laborers' migration decisions and a positive impact on their decision to work in the local off‐farm employment market. As grandparents can help to take care of young children, the impact of preschoolers is insignificant. Having elderly family to care for decreases the income earned by female members of the family. Although both men and women are actively engaged in off‐farm employment today in rural China, this study shows that women are still the primary care providers for both children and the elderly. Therefore, reforming public school enrollment and high school/college entrance examination systems so that migrant children can stay with their parents, this will help rural laborers to migrate to cities. The present study also calls for more public services for preschoolers and the elderly in rural China.     

Grandparental childcare and female labor market behaviors: Evidence from China

Using matched employer-employee survey data from China, this paper examines the relationship between grandparental childcare and female labor market behaviors based on within-firm estimations. Our analysis reveals that grandparental childcare can significantly and effectively improve the labor supply of women with children at the extensive margin although not at the intensive margin. Moreover, grandparental childcare is found to enhance the monthly earnings of working mothers without requiring more intensive work. Grandparental childcare can also assist working mothers in advancing to managerial positions. These results suggest that the discrimination by firms against women with children is reduced and their productivity is improved when grandparental childcare is available. Therefore, grandparental childcare plays a crucial role in promoting gender equality and various measures should be implemented to eliminate factors that hinder the effective utilization of grandparental childcare.     

Educational differences in parental time devoted to childcare in China

The intergenerational transmission of education in China has drawn extensive public and academic attention. This paper explores the differences in the amount of time Chinese parents spend on childcare stratified by education level and investigates the factors driving these differences. The analysis shows that more educated parents devote more time to childcare than less-educated parents. The educational differences in parental childcare time are particularly pronounced among working parents, parents with school-age children, and parents in the provinces where educational institutions are relatively scarce. Much of the extra childcare time is directed to educational care and travel with children. Compared to households in which the mother has less than a junior high school education, households with university-educated mothers spend 74 min more per day on childcare, with 58% of the extra time devoted to children's learning and education.     

Performance signals in the public sector: the case of health care

Although there are no traditional markets and money prices inthe public sector, consumers and providers may respond to signalsof organisational performance. We present a simple dynamic modelof the demand and supply for elective surgery in the UK NationalHealth Service in which waiting time acts as the prime indicatorof performance. The model is tested using a panel of quarterlydata for 123 English health authorities over an eight-year period.We find that supply is increasing and demand is decreasing inmeasures of the previous period waiting time. The results implythat health care systems which are rationed by waiting do respondto indicators of waiting times. The paper adds to the smallbut consistent body of research which demonstrates that publicsector systems respond to important aspects of reported performance.     

Effects of cost sharing on the demand for physician services in Japan: Evidence from a natural experiment

In this paper, we investigate the effects of cost sharing on the demand for physician services in Japan by using a natural experiment, namely, the increase in the coinsurance rate for household heads in 1997. Our primary finding from the two-year data, which includes the transitory effects of the reform, is that the effects of the reform on the frequency of physician visits were negative and statistically significant, and that the effects of the reform on expenditures per visit were also negative. Based on these results, the arc elasticity of demand for physician services is ?0.055. When we exclude the transitory period using the three-year data, the effects of the reform on the frequency of physician visits turn to be positive. It seems that the patients marginally curtailed the number of physician visits immediately after the reform; however, this effect was not sustained in the six months after the reform. We conclude that Japanese patients are not very price sensitive within the 10–20 percent range of coinsurance rate. Another important finding in our study is that the decrease in expenditure per visit retained even after the transitory period. This result suggests that the existence of a possible moral hazard in the treatment intensity although the decision-making process on the treatment intensity needs to be examined more carefully.     

Childcare availability,household structure,and maternal employment

We estimate the causal effects of childcare availability on the maternal employment rate using prefecture panel data constructed from the Japanese quinquennial census 1990–2010. We depart from previous papers on Japan by controlling for prefecture fixed effects, without which the estimates can be severely biased upward. Contrary to popular belief, childcare availability is uncorrelated with maternal employment when prefecture fixed effects are controlled. Evidence suggests that this is because households shift from using informal childcare provided by grandparents to the accredited childcare service, as more and more households do not live with grandparents. If this change of the household structure did not occur, the growth of childcare availability would have increased the maternal employment rate by two percentage points, which accounts for about 30% of the growth in the maternal employment rate from 1990 to 2010.     

Upward mobility and the demand for children: Evidence from China

This paper aims to investigate a new determinant of the demand for children: upward mobility. Upward mobility can affect the demand for children in two opposite directions: upward mobility means more resources to spend on childbearing and increases the demand for children; it also lowers the need to rely on children for old-age support and this leads to lower demand for children. In this paper, we use the difference between the subject's self-evaluations of the future and current social class as the measure of upward mobility, and fertility desire to represent the demand for children. Using the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) data, we find that upward mobility significantly increases the demand for children, and the results are robust across various model specifications (pooled data regression, Poisson regression, and IV regression). The effect is concentrated among affluent and/or urban households, suggesting that those from more advantaged social-economic backgrounds appear to have a higher elasticity of fertility in response to upward mobility. Our results imply that improving upward mobility and public services such as education, health care, and social security would be effective to boost fertility in China.     

Why do first-born children live together with parents?

In this paper, we analyze the strategic residential location choices of multiple siblings who receive childcare assistance from their parents. Our three stage game yields a theoretical result that first-born children are more likely to live together with or close to their parents than second-born children, which is supported by our estimation results using Japanese micro-data. We also empirically show that the childcare assistance from parents is one of the determinants of the residential location choice of siblings. This paper is the first to succeed in explaining the residential location choice of siblings in Japan using economic incentives.     

Children in Zimbabwe after the long crisis: Situation analysis and policy issues

Children in Zimbabwe suffered badly during the long crisis from circa 1990 to 2008 as the economy and social services collapsed, under-five mortality, maternal mortality and malnutrition rose, the number of orphans increased 20-fold and thousands of children experienced psychosocial trauma. Recent household surveys in Zimbabwe show that most indicators of child welfare remain at or below where they were 25 years ago. Many effects of the crisis on children are long term, even permanent, including prenatal and early childhood malnutrition, orphanhood, traumas from witnessing or being victims of violence, and disrupted education. This article analyses the Government of Zimbabwe's two most recent national development plans in relation to children's needs and rights as expressed in major international declarations. Suggestions are made for focusing on re-establishing basic services to break the cycle of harm to children, build children's capacities and deal with past traumas.     

Domestic multinationals, foreign affiliates, and labour demand elasticities

Using information on a panel of multinational firms operating in the United Kingdom from 1996 to 2005, we find that labour demand in domestic multinationals is less sensitive to labour cost changes than in foreign multinationals. This difference in the wage elasticity of labour demand persists even when we control for the skill intensity of firms or their level of intangible assets. This is in line with an interpretation that the provision of headquarter services in domestic multinational firms protects against strong fluctuations in labour demand. Overall, our results suggest that the wage elasticity of labour demand is about 40 % lower in domestic than in foreign multinationals.     

Revisiting wage subsidies: How pro-poor is a South African wage subsidy likely to be?

Wage subsidies have been used in both developed and developing countries to raise employment. After a decade of deliberation, the South African Government recently announced the introduction of a wage subsidy scheme. Given the intrinsic link between unemployment and poverty in South Africa, the belief is that a wage subsidy programme sufficient in scope will also make inroads into poverty. However, the way in which jobs are distributed among poor and non-poor jobseekers is crucial. Our general equilibrium microsimulation model confirms the expectation that a higher wage elasticity of labour demand is associated with larger reductions in poverty. We also find that a greater proportion of new jobs accrue to poor jobseekers when the elasticity is high. While youth-targeting does not improve the poverty-reducing effect of the policy, sectors such as textiles, accommodation, and construction services with their pro-poor employment profiles are good candidates for targeting.     

Endogenous fertility cycles and childcare services

We construct a two-sector overlapping generation model with endogenous fertility, where one sector produces goods and the other produces childcare services. The elasticity of fertility-related expenditures on services is crucial for determining labor participation and whether fertility converges to a steady state with monotone or oscillation. If capital intensity in the goods sector is greater than the products of elasticity and capital intensity in the service sector, then capital per capita and fertility converge to a steady state monotonically. Conversely, they converge to a steady state with oscillations, otherwise. We find an inverse J-shaped relationship between fertility and elasticity.     

A worldwide system of reference rates

This paper assumes that the major industrial countries (and probably most other major countries) will continue to employ inflation targeting and allow their exchange rates to float, in the sense of accepting no obligation to hold the rate at any particular level. However, it points out that floating may be interpreted in three different ways: as free floating, as permitting ad hoc intervention (with no rules, except possibly that there should be no “manipulation” of the exchange rate), and as managed floating, with the rules and parameters publicly announced. The latter can in turn be accomplished either by prescribing rules relating to changes or levels in the exchange rate. The paper argues in favor of a system of managed floating in which the rules prohibit intervention that would push the exchange rate away from an internationally agreed reference rate. It discusses the problems that would arise in calculating and agreeing a set of reference rates. While these would undoubtedly be serious, the prize is a system that would allow—but not compel—countries to attempt to limit the misalignments of their currency, and that would give the IMF a basis for effective surveillance.     

Exchange Rates,Domestic Prices,and Central Bank Actions: Recent U.S. Experience

Central banks that are primarily concerned with the behavior of prices will use monetary policy to try to insulate prices from exchange rate changes. Prices then appear unresponsive to changes in the exchange rate. The observed relationships between prices and the exchange rate will reflect central bank actions instead of the underlying relationship between exchange rates and prices. This paper explicitly recognizes the role that policy plays in determining the observable relationships between exchange rates and prices, and in so doing, it illustrates how the underlying relationships can be unraveled. Using three different empirical approaches, we examine the recent experience of the United States. We find that the prices of various nondurable goods, and even of some services, respond modestly to the exchange rate, and we find that the responses emerge most clearly when the role of monetary policy is explicitly considered. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the Federal Reserve acts to mitigate the effects of exchange rate fluctuations on domestic prices.     

人民币升值对我国贸易收支的影响

自2005年7月21日,中国人民银行宣布人民币升值2%,达到8.11:1水平,本文结合这次人民币汇率改革的原因,主要从人民币升值出口弹性小于1,使出口价格提高的幅度超过了出口数量减少的幅度,而加工贸易是推动我国贸易增长的主要动因,加工贸易顺差是占我国外贸顺差的比重逐步上升等方面来分析人民币汇率变动对我国贸易收支的影响,总体上看,人民币升值不会改变中国贸易持续顺差的基本格局,因而此次升值对我国的国际贸易收支长期而言是看好的。     

The “Services” Explanation for Resale Price Maintenance: Deleterious Results Missed in the Economics Literature and in Legal Decisions

Policy discussions and a U.S. Supreme Court decision interpret retailer services induced by retail price maintenance (RPM) as enhancing consumer surplus (CS) and welfare enhancing, marginalizing dissenting opinions that use similar models but with different parameters. However, if presales services stimulate demand by providing information about a product's value, they need not raise postsale value in use. Inframarginal consumers' presales perceived value may increase, but their postsale value may be unchanged, so their supposed CS gains are ephemeral, and their actual surplus falls proportional to price increase. We show that, even adding in gains to marginal consumers, effects on CS are far more negative than conceived of in this literature. Consequently, in a rule‐of‐reason antitrust environment, if RPM is challenged without alleging collusion or exclusion, presales demand‐inducing information provision is a flimsy defense if CS is the standard and not always convincing if total surplus is the standard.