消费信贷与家庭人力资本投资

已有丰富的文献考察了消费信贷对家庭消费和投资行为的影响，但少有研究关注其对家庭人力资本投资的影响。家庭人力资本投资对于人力资本积累、经济高质量发展至关重要。基于此，本文考察了信用卡使用对家庭人力资本投资的影响及其影响机制，主要发现如下：信用卡使用显著增加了家庭人力资本投资，且这一效应具有长期动态影响并对城市、高收入、高教育程度家庭影响更为显著，这意味着信用卡消费信贷可能会增加人力资本不平等。进一步研究发现，家庭会增加劳动力供给来应对人力资本支出的增加。机制分析表明，信用卡使用主要通过增加家庭消费投资、促进消费升级、缓解家庭预算约束三种途径促进家庭人力资本投资。在风险可控的前提下，引导消费信贷流向有利于实体经济发展的领域，可助力于消费升级与人力资本积累，从而为经济发展提供新动能。

Consumer Credit and Household Human Capital Investment

The growing use of credit cards increases consumer credit accessibility, alleviates liquidity constrains, facilitates smooth consumption, and increases total consumption. Previous studies investigate the effects of credit cards on consumption, savings, and financial market investments; however, few studies explore the effects on human capital investments. Meanwhile, given slowing economic growth and aging population in China, the government is facing budgetary pressure to increase education finance. Household human capital investments can increase human capital accumulation and promote high-quality economic development. Thus, this study investigates whether and how credit card usage affects household human capital investments.We use panel data from the 2011-2017 China Household Finance Survey. These nationally representative survey data provide information on households' financial and nonfinancial assets, liabilities, income, consumption, investments, and demographic characteristics. Our study proceeds in several steps and produces various findings.First, we find that credit card usage has significantly positive effects on household human capital investments. To deal with the potential concern of endogeneity, we control for the time trend of the baseline difference between households with and without credit cards into the specification. In addition, we exploit the proportion of households using credit cards in the same community as the instrumental variable. We also conduct a battery of robustness checks for alternative outcome variables, dimensional effect exclusion, different samples, propensity score matching, additional controls, and outlier exclusion. The results of all of these tests are consistent and robust.Second, we examine and establish several possible channels through which credit card usage affects household human capital investments. First, credit card usage may increase household consumption and investments, including human capital investments. Second, it may promote increased consumption and optimize the consumption structure. In other words, credit card usage can increase human capital investments for the purpose of individual development. Third, credit card usage may ease household budget constraints and optimize intertemporal asset allocation, thereby increasing human capital investments.Third, we conduct further investigation and find that credit card usage has persistent, long-term promotion effects on human capital investments. We also find that households increase their labor supply and other liabilities to ensure greater cash flow to deal with repayment pressure in the future, which raises concerns regarding potential financial risks. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that the effects of credit card usage on human capital are more pronounced among urban households and those with high income and high education levels, which may widen the gap in human capital accumulation among households.Our findings have a number of policy implications. In terms of the effects of COVID-19 and the recent substantial slashes in taxes and fees, China is facing government pressure and a slowdown in its economic growth. Our findings provide new insights into human capital dividend accumulation and show that it is a new driver for economic growth. For example, digital consumer credit can be combined with student loans to encourage households to invest more in human capital. Supervision laws and regulations and risk control systems should be improved to reduce financial risks. Thus, consumer credit can facilitate the development of the real economy, expand domestic demand and promote high-quality economic development.The study contributes to the extensive body of literature on the effects of consumer credit. Previous studies mainly focus on the impacts of consumer credit on household consumption and savings. Our findings expand the literature by providing new evidence from the perspective of household human capital investments. Moreover, our findings provide new insights into how to effectively increase human capital accumulation.