Household Life Cycle Research Articles

HANK Comes of Age

We study the aggregate and distributional effects of monetary policy in a heterogeneous agent New Keynesian model that explicitly represents the life cycle of households. The model matches the age patterns in the level and dispersion of labor income and financial wealth in the U.S. despite the absence of preference heterogeneity and portfolio adjustment costs. Monetary policy affects the consumption of young households mainly through labor income and the consumption of old households mainly through asset returns. More than half of the aggregate consumption response to an expansionary monetary policy shock comes from those below the age of 40. The shock redistributes welfare from the wealthiest old to the poorest young and increases average welfare of most cohorts.

How does digital literacy impact household carbon emissions? Evidence from household survey in China

In the background of rapid development of digital technology, exploring the relationship between residents' digital literacy (DL) and household carbon emissions (HCEs) is of great practical significance for China to achieve the carbon peak carbon neutral goal. Based on the three-period panel data of the China Family Panel Survey (CFPS) 2016-2020, we categorized digital literacy into digital learning, digital socialization, and digital consumption, and explored the impact of digital literacy on HCEs and its mechanisms. We find that digital literacy significantly and positively affects HCEs, while household life cycle, government governance, and ecological risk perception have a negative moderating effect on digital literacy affecting HCEs respectively. We also find that DL has the largest impact coefficient on HCEs from developmental consumption compared to survival and enjoyment consumption, and that DL has a more significant impact on HCEs from the consumption of young and middle-aged residents compared to older residents. These findings suggest that the dissemination of information and knowledge about carbon emissions through digital technologies, such as Internet platforms, can strengthen residents' awareness of environmental protection and thus promote their low-carbon consumption behavior.

Inequalities in Transition to Homeownership in Household Life Cycle

Inequalities in Transition to Homeownership in Household Life Cycle

Gender gaps in land rights: Explaining different measures and why households differ in Myanmar

AbstractMeasuring and understanding gender differences in property rights is key to informing policy decisions and guiding investments aimed at fostering gender equality. However, there are a myriad ways of assessing property rights. Firstly, we assess which indicators to use and why it matters, focusing on rural Myanmar. Myanmar provides an interesting setting, as a large part of the population customarily follows joint property rights in marriage and upon dissolution of marriage and inheritance. However, documented property rights are in the household head's name – usually a male household member. We find that capturing de facto transfer rights is essential, but understanding discrepancies between reported transfer rights and documented rights will be key to policymakers. Capturing agricultural decision‐making should remain a priority for agricultural projects. Second, we perform household‐ and intra‐household level analyses to explore why we find joint land rights in some, but not all, households; and why some household members have less land rights than others. A common property rights regime positively reinforces women's land rights, but incompletely so. Within households, a person's role in the household, age, and key life cycle events such as parenthood and marriage are key determinants of having land rights.

Aging, land fragmentation, and banana farmers' adoption of biopesticides in China.

Encouraging farmers to adopt biopesticides is a crucial strategy for protecting the ecological environment and achieving sustainable agricultural development. This study utilizes data from a micro-survey of 454 banana farmers from Hainan Province of China and employs a logit model to analyze the effects of aging, land fragmentation, and their interactions on farmers' adoption of biopesticides, as well as the heterogeneity of farmers in different household life cycles. The findings reveal that aging and land fragmentation both hinder biopesticide adoption, with farmers experiencing higher levels of aging and more fragmented land holdings being less likely to utilize biopesticides in banana production. Mechanism analysis uncovers an interaction effect between aging and land fragmentation that hampers biopesticide adoption. Furthermore, the effects of aging, land fragmentation, and their interaction on biopesticide adoption behavior vary across farmers in different family life cycles. Specifically, aging negatively affects biopesticide adoption behavior for farmers in support households, while land fragmentation negatively influences farmers in dependency and burden households. The interaction between aging and land fragmentation adversely affects farmers in burden households. Our findings highlight the importance of aging agricultural labor and land fragmentation to promote green agriculture in China and call for more relevant policies to encourage farmers with different household life cycles to adopt biopesticides in farming practices.

Time horizon and cryptocurrency ownership: Is crypto not speculative?

This paper shows that households’ time horizon influences the propensity to own crypto. In particular, the longer the time horizon, the greater the propensity to own Crypto. Our results are robust even among educated and financially literate households, and using different data sets. We then present a fully rational expectation household life cycle model, and demonstrate that household’s time horizon should negatively influence the propensity to own crypto. We examine other explanations, such as, transaction cost (cost variation in learning crypto investment, cheaper for millennials) or the fear of missing out (FOMO) prospects, and find no significant change in the results. Altogether, the empirical and theoretical results suggest that households view Crypto as a pseudo productive/long-term asset class, and not speculative.

From energy behaviours to lifestyles: Contribution of behavioural archetypes to the description of energy consumption patterns in the residential sector

Many studies emphasise that household energy behaviour is a key determinant of domestic energy consumption, but few highlight the fact that it is fundamentally associated with lifestyle and housing context. Existing studies that address this issue perform clustering but use only restricted datasets and rarely describe the associated households and housings. In this study, we develop an original methodology to construct behavioural archetypes from qualitative and quantitative variables, opening up perspectives for a wider and more transparent use of survey data. The clustering is performed with 35 variables describing hygiene, food, heating, lighting and leisure practices and housing occupation. Seven homogeneous archetypes of domestic behaviours were constructed from a database describing 1363 households in the Ile de France region. The analysis of the related household profiles shows that the behavioural archetypes are related to specific housing contexts and energy consumption levels. The work also invites to stand back from the variables usually mobilized, such as income or tenure status, and used for the conception of targeted policies. In particular, the work highlights the value of the household life cycle in constructing a typology suitable for policy makers. Finally, this work opens up avenues for the construction of archetypal energy consumption models.

Livelihood vulnerability of pastoral households in the semiarid grasslands of northern China: Measurement and determinants

Livelihood vulnerability assessment has become an important policy tool for identifying groups in need of immediate intervention. Based on survey data covering 427 households in the Hulunbuir Grasslands in northern China, an indicator-based livelihood vulnerability assessment system (LVAS) was established by combining the sustainable livelihood framework and the exposure–sensitivity–adaptation framework, which described the livelihood vulnerability of households across the household life cycle in terms of the dimensions of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptation. A multiple linear regression model was used to identify the key variables that determine livelihood vulnerability. The results show that the livelihoods of pastoral households in the Hulunbuir Grasslands are moderately vulnerable overall, with a high level of exposure, a medium level of sensitivity, and a low level of adaptive capacity. As the household life cycle progresses (from the starting period to the empty-nest period), the adaptive capacity of pastoral households gradually decreases, and their livelihood vulnerability increases. The variables that most exacerbate the vulnerability of pastoral households’ livelihoods in this region are policy–ecological risks, climate–disaster risks and socioeconomic risks, and the main ways to reduce vulnerability are to improve these households’ productive capital, diversify their sources of livelihood, and improve their access to information. The results of the study provide empirical support for similar settings in different regions worldwide that aim to achieve a “win–win” situation of ecological conservation and sustainable livelihood development.

Age Structure and Carbon Emission with Climate-Extended STIRPAT Model-A Cross-Country Analysis

Most of the existing carbon emission studies based on the IPAT framework considered the size effect rather than structure effect of population. However, it is proved with the micro-data household evidence that the demographic structure explains the unexpected trends better. To complete the framework, this study integrated the structure effects with the STIRPAT model base on the household life-cycle consumption theory as different age groups differ in carbon consumption behaviors. For further analysis with the frequent extreme weather events caused by global warming and their catastrophic effect on human activities, this study also harmonized Köppen criteria with the theories model by Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann and considers climate factors precipitation (PRE), annual degree-day (DD), and temperature anomaly (TA) with the extended model to investigate whether population aging trend provides room for or creates barriers to carbon reduction. NASA night-time light (NTL) data DMSP/OLS and VIIRS/DNB is adopted as the proxy for population density to weight the relevant climate data from over 30,000 weather stations worldwide. The combined dataset is from 150 countries, and the period is during 1970–2013. The Panel Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR) method is used to solve the problems of cross-sectional correlation, non-stationarity, and endogeneity since sample countries are closely linked in the global meteorological system which make each cross-sectional disturbance term likely to be contemporaneously correlated, and endogeneity of carbon emission under the same global agreement constraint. The empirical results show that the age structure had significant and different impacts on carbon emissions. The general influence of age growth is an inverted U shape as the younger group consumes less than the older group, and offspring leave the family when the householder turns 50. The EKC theory is also checked with the threshold model of per capita income on carbon emissions to determine how many countries reached carbon peak. This study proved that the aggregated carbon consumption pattern is aligned with the microlevel evidence on household energy consumption. Another distinguished finding is that population aging may generally lead to an increase in heat and electricity carbon emissions, contrary to what some household energy consumption models would predict. We explain the uplifted tail as the “effect caused by the narrowed adaptation temperature range” when people are getting older and vulnerable. It should be noted that as the aging trend becomes severe worldwide and extreme weather events happen with higher frequency, the potential energy spending and thus carbon emission on air conditioning will undoubtfully overgrow. One important method is to improve the building energy efficiency by retrofitting old buildings’ insulations. Implementing new green building standards in carbon reduction must not be ignored. Evidence shows that if the insulation of pre-1990s houses is reconstructed with modern materials, carbon emissions caused by residential cooling and heating can be reduced by about 20% every year. Overall, promoting an efficient building style provides reduction capacity for the industrial sector, and it is a way to achieve sustainable growth.

Integrating an intrahousehold perspective into climate change adaptation research

Many survey-based studies on climate change adaptation behaviours have methodological inadequacies because of the mismatched scale of analysis between individual-level predictors and household-level adaptation behaviours; thus, addressing intrahousehold dynamics in climate change adaptation research is essential. Synthesising the findings of related literature, we identified seven key intrahousehold factors that are likely to influence household adaptation processes: (1) gendered division of labour, (2) disagreements, (3) conflicts and conflict resolution strategies, (4) decision-making stages, (5) types of decision-making, (6) interpersonal influence, and (7) household life cycle. We also specified three intrahousehold factors that are likely to influence household adaptation outcomes: (1) gendered adaptation behaviours, (2) relational adaptation behaviours, and (3) household life cycle and adaptation behaviours. Acknowledging the potential bias of approaching just one representative per household, we then detailed conceptual frameworks and pragmatic advice for applying a household-based approach in climate change adaptation studies. Future research will benefit from clear articulation of the level of analyses and more coherent and viable methodological solutions that involve consideration of intrahousehold dynamics.

Household Lifecycle, Daily Travel Behavior, and Residential Location: Case in Aichi, Japan

Household Lifecycle, Daily Travel Behavior, and Residential Location: Case in Aichi, Japan

Joint-Activities Generation among Household Members using a Latent Class Model

Individuals’ decision to include an activity in their daily agendas is based on their needs. They take decisions of activity participation, considering the activities and schedules of other household members. This results in activities that involve the joint participation of household members. Limited modelling research is available on the notion of the generation process of joint activities of household members. Besides, the time span for most of the operational models is a single day. The current paper’s focus is on modelling joint-activity generation where the time span is based on multiple days (one week). We used a latent class model (LCM) and estimated it using the data from the National Travel Survey (NTS (UK)) for the years 2013-14. On a given day, it is assumed that the individual includes an activity (that may be joint activity) in his agenda based on his need. The model predicts the probability of alternatives for an individual. Each alternative represents a series of binary outcomes (i.e. 1 or 0) in relation to the generation of a specific type of joint activity for every single day of the week. Four latent classes are identified based on model-fit parameters: frequent joint-activity performer, weekdays joint-activity performer, non-frequent joint-activity performer, and weekend joint-activity performer. The results show that both household and individual attributes impact the individual’s weekly joint activities generation. The individual’s economic status (i.e. full-time worker, part-time worker, etc.), available time window after mandatory activities, number of household members and life cycle stage (structure of the household, i.e. single-parent family etc.) affect which latent class the individual belongs to. Future research is focused on estimating the number of tours, and travel parties involve in joint activity models. It also focuses on integrating the model in some functional activity-based model.

Drivers of farmer involvement in experimental forage trials in the Peruvian Andes and implications for participatory research design

Abstract This study analyses the experience and response of farmers within a multi-year collaborative research trial focused on the development of forage-based fallows in eight communities in the central Peruvian Andes. Quantitative data from a rural household survey were used to characterize farming household socioeconomic factors, livelihood strategies and soil and crop management practices of community members belonging to four participation groups with respect to the trials: 1) current participants near the end of the trial; 2.) those who participated early on, but dropped the trials after the first year; 3) those who participated in meetings but not directly in experiments; and 4) those who never participated meaningfully in the process. Furthermore, qualitative interviews of farmers in the four groups were used to examine trends and questions arising from the quantitative survey findings. Analysis of this mixed-methods dataset showed that better resource-endowed households (in terms of human and social capital, more livestock assets, higher levels of farm value production and income, and farm inputs) tended to be more likely to participate compared to households with lower levels of these variables. Our findings suggest that the differences in resource endowment among participation group households may be related to household life cycles, where access to resources change over time, reflecting the changing demography of a household. It was established that farm households with intermediate-age children, that is near the middle of a farm life cycle trajectory, are those with the most wherewithal to participate in trials and likely serve as examples and test cases for other farms with younger parents or older farmers with children moved away. Follow-up interviews indicated that farming households at either end of the farm life cycle trajectory may be using a ‘wait-and-see’ approach to the trials carried out by their neighbours who have more labour and other resources to deploy. In light of these findings, we suggest that participatory research should aim to ensure that the voices, challenges and opportunities of Non-participants are represented in the research process and experimental design. Additionally, greater consideration should be placed on understanding management by context issues in order to better target potential farming innovations such as improved fallows, at multiple levels, from the field to the household and to the community and beyond.

The impact of buyer shopping orientations and demographic factors on the purchasing for different product types- in the context of online shopping

The impact of buyer shopping orientations and demographic factors on the purchasing for different product types- in the context of online shopping

The Life Cycle and Family Strategies of Suburban Farm Households in the 1930s: A Case Analysis of 13 Farm Households in Fukuoka Prefecture

The Life Cycle and Family Strategies of Suburban Farm Households in the 1930s: A Case Analysis of 13 Farm Households in Fukuoka Prefecture

Tenure Status in Life Cycle Cohorts in Poland

Abstract Poland is characterized by a relatively high level of homeowners (84% of population in 2018). The preference for ownership, as well as financial possibilities, are not balanced throughout the entire life cycle of a household. The scale of these differences, as well as the tendency to change over time, remains unknown. The subject of conducted research is to indicate how the structure of the tenure status of Poles changes over the life cycle of a household. This publication proposes the division of the household life cycle into the stages of formation, stabilization and reduction. The research on the structure of the tenure status of Poles was conducted for the period of 2006-2018. The analysis showed that, while the share of owner-occupiers increased significantly in Poland in the years 2006-2018, at the stage of forming a household rent begins to prevail. What is more, young people are more likely to choose market rent, and relocation to private housing is associated with having children or getting married. At the same time, there is no tendency to relocate to rented flats at the stage of household reduction in Poland.

Understanding resilience: Lessons from lived experiences of extreme poverty in Bangladesh

AbstractMotivationA large donor‐funded programme in Bangladesh implemented multiple measures designed to graduate individuals and households out of extreme poverty. The programme was committed to lesson learning and advocacy. It monitored change through socioeconomic surveys, qualitative tracking methods, real time assessment and project evaluations. The qualitative tracking in particular shed light on the nature of extreme poverty and resilience.PurposeIs extreme poverty different from moderate poverty, and in what ways? Do the extreme poor experience more idiosyncratic poverty than structural or systemic poverty? Are the extreme poor more likely to be women and girls more socially isolated and marginalized due to their gender, thus impeding their capabilities? What support is needed to enable recovery and transformation from crises?Approach and methodsBetween 2011 and 2015, 72 life histories of households enrolled in a major poverty reduction programme were conducted, entailing repeated ethnographical engagement with informants. This showed how most households experience ups and downs in their poverty and vulnerability through time: an experience at variance with static understandings of hazards and responses. The limitations of resilience literature are thus critiqued to develop a new theory around time preference behaviour and discounting.FindingsExperiences of extreme poverty are not solely a function of systemic, class‐based inequality, but of the varied and reinforcing ways they intersect with idiosyncratic conditions of household life cycles, dependency ratios, gender and age balance, morbidity, ethnic discrimination and social isolation. Four key factors stand out as influencing deep poverty: (a) ill health, with significant internal opportunity costs; (b) intergenerational reproduction; (c) high incidence of female‐managed and ‐headed households, resulting from male desertion; and (d) a lack of income diversity and security.Policy ImplicationsOur findings provide fresh insights into policy responses to extreme poverty. These insights suggest a policy shift away from a narrow concern with graduation to a wider focus on resilience. Resilience as a poverty reduction outcome requires interventions that support individuals (micro level), target the intergenerational reproduction of poverty (meso level), and engage with wider power structures that exploit and neglect poor people (macro level). Policy‐makers need to engage more explicitly with the meso and macro levels in particular, recognizing how the three levels converge to reproduce conditions of extreme poverty.

The effects of financing rules in pay-as-you-go pension systems on the life and the business cycle

Abstract Empirically, revenues of public pension systems are more volatile than expenditures. Therefore, the question arises how the social security authority should buffer its revenues and adjust its contributions over the business cycle. This paper studies the corresponding effects on the life cycle of households and the business cycle in a large-scale overlapping generations model. In particular, the labor supply is endogenous and takes the intertemporal links between contributions and pension benefits into account. Sluggish adjustments of contribution rates that are implemented by adjusting a financial buffer stock both stabilize an economy and decrease the volatility of lifetime utilities of most workers and retirees, in contrast to sole adjustments of contribution rates. However, changes of consumption, capital income, or lump sum taxes, which aim to balance public pension budgets, improve the allocation of aggregate risk across cohorts for people up to an age of at least 71 years.

A life-cycle theory analysis of French household electricity demand

This paper develops a pseudo-panel approach to examine household electricity demand behavior through the household life cycle and its response to income variations to help strengthen the energy policy-making process. Our empirical methodology is based on three rich independent microdata surveys (the National Housing Surveys), which are representative of the French housing sector. The resulted sample covers the 2006–2016 period. Using within estimations, this paper finds striking evidence that the income elasticity of French residential electricity demand is 0.22, averaged over our four cohorts of generations. In light of other works, our estimate stands in the lower range. The empirical results also show that residential electricity consumption follows an inverted U-shaped distribution as a function of the age of the household’s head. Most notably, it appears that households at the mid-point of their life cycle are relatively the largest consumers of electricity. This outcome has important implications for policy-making. Any public policy aimed at reducing household energy consumption should consider this differentiation in consumption according to the position of households over the life cycle, and therefore target as priority households at the highest level of consumption.

Life Cycle Assessment of Households in Santiago, Chile: Environmental Hotspots and Policy Analysis

The aim of this study is to assess the environmental impacts of household life cycles in Santiago, Chile, by household income level. The assessment considered scenarios associated with environmental policies. The life cycle assessment was cradle-to-grave, and the functional unit considered all the materials and energy required to meet an inhabitant’s needs for one year (1 inh/year). Using SimaPro 9.1 software, the Recipe Midpoint (H) methodology was used. The impact categories selected were global warming, fine particulate matter formation, terrestrial acidification, freshwater eutrophication, freshwater ecotoxicity, mineral resource scarcity, and fossil resource scarcity. The inventory was carried out through the application of 300 household surveys and secondary information. The main environmental sources of households were determined to be food consumption, transport, and electricity. Food consumption is the main source, responsible for 33% of the environmental impacts on global warming, 69% on terrestrial acidification, and 29% on freshwater eutrophication. The second most crucial environmental hotspot is private transport, whose contribution to environmental impact increases as household income rises, while public transport impact increases in the opposite direction. In this sense, both positive and negative environmental effects can be generated by policies. Therefore, life-cycle environmental impacts, the synergy between policies, and households’ socio-economic characteristics must be considered in public policy planning and consumer decisions.