Financial risk attitudes and aging in Australia

A number of empirical studies document that people tend to become more risk averse as they get older. But other studies find only little evidence that age matters for financial risk attitudes. This prompts a call for revisiting the relationship between age and risk attitude to better support policy recommendations. The current paper contributes to this effort by utilising large-scale population data to conduct a dynamic panel analysis. Care is taken to avoid the problem of endogeneity of lagged risk attitude in modelling its effects. Analysis reveals that individuals' past risk attitude has a positive effect on their current risk attitude. However, there is only little evidence that risk attitude and age are systematically related. Our results shed some light on the previous contradictory empirical findings in the literature and suggest that past risk attitude is potentially of greater relevance than chronological age in determining current risk attitude.     

老龄化社会城市老年政策的理念变革

分析中国老龄化社会城市遭遇的各种老年问题,讨论了老龄化城市社会问题的主要特征、发展趋势和解决老龄问题的重要性.回顾国外老龄化进程中的公共服务政策,认为中国城市应对日益加剧的老龄化应进行城市治理理念与公共服务理念的变革.提出政策创新体系基础上的老年社会政策与社会福利增长的对策与建议.     

人口结构与经济增长的关系研究——基于新疆时间序列数据的实证检验

运用新疆2004年至2018年的时间序列数据分析人口结构与经济增长之间的关系。研究发现：新疆人口结构能够显著影响经济增长。其中,少年抚养比和劳动力抚养比均能够促进经济增长,而老年抚养比则不利于经济增长。外商直接投资和研发支出也是促进经济增长的变量之一。最后根据实证分析结果对新疆地区经济发展提出了相应的建议,认为新疆应当不断引进高技术人才,提高劳动力抚养比在人口结构中的比重等建议。     

Older and More Engaged: The Mediating Role of Age‐Linked Resources on Work Engagement

In the era of a graying workforce, individuals and their employers are concerned with the impact of the graying workforce on the level of engagement at work. Contrary to the myths about older workers being less engaged, statistics have shown that the level of engagement is higher as people age. Within the broad framework of conservation of resources theory in the area of work engagement, the current study aims to clarify how older workers are more engaged at work than younger workers. Building upon socioemotional selectivity theory and continuity theory from a life‐span perspective, we explain how individuals gain more resources as they age, including the abilities to regulate emotion and to maintain a career identity. We argue that this positive relationship between age and resources explains why older people have high levels of work engagement. We tested our predictions with a sample of 613 workers in the United States. The study demonstrates that well‐regulated emotion and strong commitment to career mediate the positive relationship between age and work engagement simultaneously. These findings contribute to the understanding of an aging workforce's engagement in the workplace. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

人口老龄化进程中养老保障的消费增进效应——基于CHARLS数据的研究

利用2013年中国健康与养老追踪调查(CHARLS)数据中的8355个家庭数据,在控制家庭人口特征和家庭经济能力的情况下,分别从家庭消费水平和家庭消费结构两方面考察人口老龄化进程中养老保障对家庭消费的影响。结果显示:养老负担会使家庭人均消费支出明显下降,但是医疗保健方面的消费支出占比会显著提高;参加养老保障会显著提高家庭的人均消费支出,尤其是无养老负担家庭会减少对未来养老的预防性储蓄而增加当期消费,养老保障的消费增进效应明显,但是有养老保障家庭的各项消费支出占比则没有显著的提高或下降。这充分说明养老负担是家庭消费水平难以提高的重要因素,而养老保障是刺激人口老龄化进程中消费增长的有力手段。     

Dining out,the missing food consumption in China

Food security concern in China is also the world’s concern. Studies on food consumption in the past, however, often neglected the increasing food consumed away from home (FAFH). Drawn on a survey data recently conducted in nine cities by a week-long diary method, we found that FAFH in urban China accounts for a significant proportion of total food consumption, although its share varies by food category. With substantial expected income growth, overall FAFH consumption will likely continue to rise, but would be negatively affected by the rapid societal aging process, both in dining out probability and per capita consumption level. The main findings of this study have implications for food processing and service industries as well as for studies in food-related environmental issues.     

Causes and Remedies of the Japan's Long‐lasting Recession: Lessons for China

Japan has suffered from sluggish economic growth and recession since the early 1990s. In this paper, we analyze the causes of the prolonged slowdown of the Japanese economy (the lost decade). Economics Nobel laureate Paul Krugman has argued that Japan's lost decade is an example of a liquidity trap. However, our empirical analysis shows that stagnation of the Japanese economy comes from its vertical IS curve rather than a horizontal LM curve, so the Japanese economy has been facing structural problems rather than a temporary downturn. The vertical IS curve is caused by an insensitivity of investment to a lower interest rate partly because of the decline of sales due to the aging population and firms not wanting to invest. The structural problems come from the aging demographic, which is often neglected by scholars and policy‐makers, and also from the allocation of transfers from the central government to local governments, and the unwillingness of Japanese banks to lend money to startup businesses and small and medium enterprises (SMEs), mainly because of Basel capital requirements. Many countries, like China, are expected to face similar issues, particularly given the aging population. The present paper will address why the Japanese economy has been trapped in a prolonged slowdown and provide some remedies for revitalizing the economy.     

Structural Changes in the Labor Market and the Rise of Early Retirement in France and Germany

The rise of early retirement in Europe is typically attributed to the European system of taxes and transfers. A model with an imperfectly competitive labor market allows us to consider also the effects of bargaining power and of matching efficiency on pre‐retirement. We find that lower bargaining power of workers and declining matching efficiency have been important determinants of early retirement in France and Germany. These structural changes, combined with early retirement transfers and population aging, are also consistent with the employment and unemployment rates, labor share and seniority premia.     

Education Subsidies, Social Security and Growth: The Implications of a Demographic Shock

We develop a three-period overlapping-generations model in which individual decisions about education are the engine of growth. In this setting, we investigate the normative role of education subsidies and old age pensions. Calibrating this model on empirical data, it is shown that the case for positive pension benefits is rather weak on the optimal path. An important part of education subsidies should be financed by lump-sum taxes on retirees. We also examine how these transfers should be adjusted in the presence of a baby boom-baby bust demographic shock. It turns out that an appropriate policy could be to increase education when the baby-boom generation is at work. Labor productivity will then be higher when aging peaks so that the pension bill can be financed without reducing welfare for the baby-bust generations.
JEL classification : O 41; J 24; E 62     

老龄化背景下住房负担能力对家庭创业行为的影响——来自CHFS数据的证据

基于2013—2017年中国家庭金融调查(CHFS)三期面板数据,利用房价收入比作为住房负担能力的衡量指标,实证分析老龄化背景下房价收入比对家庭创业行为的影响。结果表明：房价收入比越高,家庭参与创业活动的积极性越低;老龄化进程的加快会进一步加剧高房价收入比对家庭创业活动的抑制作用。进一步分析发现,在老龄化加剧背景下,高房价收入比的创业抑制效应主要集中在仅有一套房的家庭中。基于此,提出在促进房地产市场平稳健康发展的同时,需积极加快完善养老服务体系并引导家庭理性配置资产。