Rural Pension Research Articles

Whether Pension Program Stimulates the Consumption of Addictive Products: Evidence from China’s New Rural Pension Scheme

ABSTRACT Much attention has been paid to evaluating the policy effects of pension programs, but few studies have focused on possible inefficiencies stemming from their implementation. Drawing on a quasi-natural experiment associated with the adoption of China’s New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS), this study explores the impact of the NRPS on food consumption among rural residents. A difference-in-differences (DID) analysis is performed using panel data from the 2009 and 2013 National Rural Fixed Observation survey. Results show that participation in the NRPS improves residents’ dietary quality by increasing the consumption of recommended foods and decreasing the consumption of non-recommended foods. However, the results also show that the NRPS is associated with increased consumption of addictive and unhealthy products, especially in households with lower average levels of education, poorer self-reported health, and older adults over age 60. Findings suggest that when examining the possible health effects of new pension policies, it is essential to account for potential increases in the intake of unhealthy and addictive products, such as cigarettes and alcohol.

New rural pension scheme, intergenerational exchange, and intergenerational economic support of the rural elderlies: a study from the perspectives of classical altruism theory and exchange motivation theory

As the severity of rural old-age care in China becomes increasingly evident, the manner in which rural elderly individuals obtain economic support has emerged as a significant societal concern. Central to this paper is the question of whether the new rural pension scheme, as the first government-provided institutional pension, influences the longstanding intergenerational economic support within families. Drawing upon classic altruism theory and exchange motivation theory, this study analyzes the complex rural social reality in China. Using data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) for the years 2013 and 2015, we employ a two-part model to examine the policy effects of new rural pension scheme, as well as the 2014 pension insurance reform and pension increase. Our findings reveal that (1) altruism and exchange motivation coexist in the rural Chinese social reality and jointly influence the behaviors of rural families. (2) Intergenerational economic support for the elderly in rural Chinese families primarily depends on the exchange motivation aspect of intergenerational care. Thus, it is vital to strengthen the intergenerational support of the family in addressing the pensions of the elderly in rural China.

Does land expropriation to neighbors affect the enrollment of bystanders in pension programs?

Land expropriation can incur not only economic costs but also political costs. Using panel data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), we investigate the impact of land expropriation on the compliance behaviors of rural residents for the New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS), which is an extremely important public policy led by the government in China. To exclude the potential confounding impacts of reduced social security levels resulting from land expropriation, we focus on farmers in the same village who have not suffered land expropriation. The results of the difference-in-differences (DID) regression model suggest that land expropriation significantly reduces the probability of farmers within the same village, who have not suffered land expropriation, enrolling in the NRPS. The primary reasons are that land expropriation significantly decreases the trust of non-land expropriated farmers in local officials and the NRPS. Additionally, land expropriation has a stronger impact on unexpropriated farmers with lower levels of education, as well as unexpropriated households without Communist Party of China membership or with a high level of dependence on agriculture. Our findings suggest the cost of land expropriation is larger than previously thought, as it generates broader political trust and policy compliance issues.

Are children and pension substitutes? Evidence from the new rural pension scheme in China

ABSTRACT The study examines whether children, widely recognized as an important source of old-age security in many societies, reduce people’s demand for a social pension programme in rural China – the New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS). OLS results suggest that having one more child will lower the NRPS participation rate by 3.0 percentage points and the effect of an additional son is larger than the effect of an additional daughter. However, using fines on unauthorized births under the One Child Policy in China as the instrument of children quantity, I find that the number of children has no causal effect on NRPS participation. Heterogeneity analysis shows that, when all children are adults, the number of children will increase the annual NRPS contribution. These findings suggest that old-age support based on family networks does not necessarily impede the development of formal pension programmes.

Can the return of rural labor improve the physical health of left-behind parents-evidence from rural China.

Objectively In objective terms, the return of rural labor force shortens the spatial distance with parents, leading to changes in caregiving support, emotional support, and financial support for parents, thereby affecting the health status of parents. This article, using data from the Chinese Family Panel Studies, analyzes the characteristics of the health status of parents with and without returning migrant children. By employing multiple linear regression models, PSM models, and IV-2SLS methods to address endogeneity bias, the study preliminarily explores the impact of rural labor force return on parental health. The results show that: (1) among the 5,760 older adult individuals, 1866 of them have returning migrant chil-dren, while the remaining 3,894 do not have returning migrant children. (2) Parents' health status generally follows a normal distribution, with a small proportion of parents having very poor or very good health. The proportions of parents with relatively poor, fair, and relatively good health status range between 20 and 40%. Among parents with returning chil-dren, 40.12% have relatively poor health status, 45.01% have fair health status, and a small proportion have very poor or very good health status. In contrast, among parents without returning children, the proportions of parents with relatively poor, fair, and rela-tively good health status are 21.69, 33.21, and 38.45%, respectively. When parents tran-sition from not having returning children to having returning children, their health status decreases by 0.541 levels, indicating a negative impact of rural labor force return on par-ents' health. Based on the analysis results, this article provides policy recommendations from three aspects: how to increase the income of returning labor force, improve the rural pension system, and enhance the concept of children supporting their parents.

Effects of China’s New Rural Pension Scheme on Aging Populations

Effects of China’s New Rural Pension Scheme on Aging Populations

Study on the Impact of Marital Status on Rural Elderly Pension Insurance

The marital status of elderly people in rural areas directly affects their health and cognitive status, and potentially affects their understanding and identification with rural pension insurance, affecting the scale and structure of rural pension insurance. This article takes Jilin Province as the research sample, adopts the fourth national survey data on the living conditions of elderly people in cities, and establishes an empirical model to analyze the relationship between the marital status of rural elderly people and their participation in pension insurance. The research findings indicate that individuals who have never been married have a positive impact on pension insurance; The marital status of widowhood has a positive impact on the elderly's pension insurance situation; Divorce has a positive impact on the elderly's pension insurance. The marital status of being married but not cohabiting has no significant impact on the elderly's pension insurance.

Reducing energy poverty by nearly universal pension coverage of rural China

This paper estimates the causal effect of income change on reducing energy poverty by exploiting age-based eligibility for China’s New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS) through a regression discontinuity (RD) design. More than one billion people worldwide live in energy poverty, and the situation is even more difficult in developing world. It is an important development challenge to reduce energy poverty, which could be further associated with health outcome, labor productivity, and educational achievements. While public policies that increase income for poor households are the most direct ways to reduce energy poverty, the reverse causality makes establishing a convincing causal link between income and energy poverty challenging. Using the quasi-experimental variation in income induced by NRPS, this paper addresses the endogeneity of income and examines the impact of exogenous sharp changes in income on energy consumption behaviors. The findings indicate substantial increases in modern energy consumption and sizable reductions in solid fuels (e.g., straw and fuelwood), suggesting that “windfall income” by pension coverage alleviates energy poverty. Although individuals could anticipate the income shocks by pension coverage, the evidence suggests that they do not engage in anticipatory responses to smooth their consumption. Further evidence shows that liquidity constraints may be the underlying mechanism for the lack of anticipatory responses in household energy consumption. Besides reducing energy poverty, the results demonstrate that pension coverage leads to a decrease in elderly labor supply, an increase in subjective health and life satisfaction, and an increase in non-energy consumption, all of which are positively associated with the well-beings of senior citizens. We anticipate that the findings of this paper in the context of China may be extended to developing world which has been expected to set up targeted measures to tackle energy poverty in upcoming decades.

Integration of the rural revitalization strategy in the construction of rural elderly services in the information age

Abstract Aiming at the uncertainty of decision-making factors and the difficulty of quantifying various subjective and objective weights in the process of rural pension service quality evaluation, this paper proposes a rural pension service quality evaluation method combining improved interval AHP and CRITIC method based on indicator correlation at the level of rural revitalization strategy. The method is based on 5 guidelines and 11 common factors, comprehensively considers the influence of subjective and objective weights on the design scheme, introduces the interval number and triangular fuzzy number, and establishes the evaluation index system of rural elderly service. By utilizing the improved interval AHP and CRITIC method, the subjective and objective weights of each evaluation index can be calculated. The analysis is done by combining examples to explore the ecological niche of the senior care industry, the rural suitability for elderly people, and their expectations and perceptions of the service. From the market ecological niche, it can be seen that the result of the senior care manufacturing industry measure is 0.85, which contributes the most to the rural economy in rural revitalization. The travel, ecological landscape, living services, and socio-economic environment in rural areas are improved under the rural revitalization strategy, and the weighted scores of the four are 0.5528, 1.1524, 1.299, and 0.6031, respectively. According to the comprehensive results, the rural revitalization strategy has resulted in a noticeable increase in the rural aged-care industry and services.

乡村振兴战略背景下农村养老问题探究

乡村振兴战略背景下农村养老问题探究

Exploration of Rural Family Structure Changes and Remodeling of Rural Pension Modes in Contemporary China

Exploration of Rural Family Structure Changes and Remodeling of Rural Pension Modes in Contemporary China

From Participation to Symbiosis: The Realistic Dilemma and the Path of Promotion of New Rural Talents in Assisting Rural Pension

From Participation to Symbiosis: The Realistic Dilemma and the Path of Promotion of New Rural Talents in Assisting Rural Pension

The Path of Social Support Network Promoting the High Quality Development of Rural Pension under the New Situation

The Path of Social Support Network Promoting the High Quality Development of Rural Pension under the New Situation

From Tradition to Modernity: An In-Depth Analysis of the Evolution of the Rural Pension Model in China

From Tradition to Modernity: An In-Depth Analysis of the Evolution of the Rural Pension Model in China

Do the New Rural Pension Scheme promote the health status of chronic patients in old age? —Evidence from CHARLS 2018 in China

BackgroundMany researchers have examined the impact of social insurance on health in elderly. However, in most cases, they have only demonstrated correlational results and have not been able to determine causal effects, possibly because confounding biases have not been fully addressed. In this study, we investigated the health effects of the New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS) on the elderly (age≥60 years old) with chronic diseases in rural areas, and to explore the causal relationship and effects of NRPS and health status.MethodsThis paper used data from the 2018 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) and applied Bayesian networks and fuzzy regression discontinuity design to conduct causal analysis. Bayesian networks were used to explore the causal directed acyclic graphs of factors related to NRPS and health status. Based on the results of Bayesian network, a fuzzy regression discontinuity design was employed to estimate the causal effect of NRPS on health status.ResultsAmong rural elderly with chronic diseases, Bayesian network mapping of causal relationships among NRPS, health status and covariates showed that age was a common cause of NRPS receipt and satisfaction with health. The results of the fuzzy regression discontinuity analysis showed that the effect of receiving NRPS on the health status was positive, but there was no statistically significant difference concerning the interval estimates. The results of the subgroup analysis with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma indicated that the effect of NRPS receipt on the health status of elderly people with COPD was positive. There was a statistically significant effect of receiving NRPS on self-rated health description (β1=3.653,P=0.032\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$${\\beta }_{1}=3.653,P=0.032$$\\end{document}) and health satisfaction (β1=4.204,P=0.033\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$${\\beta }_{1}=4.204,P=0.033$$\\end{document}) in COPD population and a statistically significant effect of receiving NRPS on health satisfaction in asthma population (β1=9.844,P=0.008\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$${\\beta }_{1}=9.844,P=0.008$$\\end{document}).ConclusionThis paper has confirmed the contribution and positive causal effect of NRPS on health status in a subgroup of older adults with COPD and asthma, using the CHARLS database as evidence. Thus, Chinese government should increase the take-up rate of the NRPS to enhance their positive impact on health status of elderly people with chronic diseases in rural areas.

Research on the Problems and Countermeasures Analysis of Old-age Security for the Elderly in Rural China in the Context of Population Aging

With the simultaneous process of urbanization and population aging in China, old-age security for rural senior citizens has once again attracted attention. Chinas rural areas are currently experiencing increased population aging, while social security initiatives for the aging population are insufficient. Therefore, in the context of population aging, it is imperative to improve the problem of old-age security for rural senior citizens in China. This paper mainly uses the literature research method and comparative analysis method, and based on comparing and analyzing the social pension problems in coastal and mainland rural areas, it puts forward corresponding countermeasures for Chinas actual situation to address the issue of rural pension security in China. China has transitioned into the phase of population aging. The research on the rural elderlys old-age security problems can better identify the existing problems; the existing problems will be studied and solved to help reduce the burden of Chinas younger generation of old-age pension, which can be stabilized for the elderly in their old age and is conducive to improving the pioneering ability of the younger generation and the vitality of the countrys economic development.

Re-Examine: The Power of China’s New Rural Pension Scheme

Drawing upon data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) and the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), this paper employs a Difference in Differences (DID) approach to investigate the varying impacts of the New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS) across different regions in China. The empirical results reveal that the NRPS has generally improved the health outcomes of residents. Notably, the benefits of the NRPS are more pronounced in rural and economically advanced areas, while its effects are not statistically significant in less developed and urban regions. This analysis elucidates the underlying reasons for these regional disparities, attesting to the pension policy’s efficacy and advancing the scholarly conversation on pension policy research.

New rural pension scheme, intergenerational interaction and rural family human capital investments.

The new rural pension scheme (NRPS) can improve the quality of life for rural older adult individuals; however, can it have a spillover effect on rural household human capital investments through intergenerational interactions? Based on data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) in 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2018 and from the perspective of intergenerational interactions, the spillover effect and influencing mechanism of the new rural insurance policy on rural household human capital investments are empirically tested. The results show that the participation of families in the new rural insurance policy can significantly promote the human capital investments of rural families, and they are robust. Moreover, the spillover effect of this new policy is significantly different due to the gender, insurance phase, and family income of the insured. Through intergenerational interactions, the new rural insurance policy has an impact on the human capital investments of rural families from the material level of intergenerational economic support, housework and childcare for children and the nonmaterial level of old-age care cognition. Therefore, continuing to promote the coverage of the new rural insurance policy and scientifically improving rural social security through publicity and education to promote benign intergenerational family interactions can improve the accumulation of human capital in rural areas.

Construction of Evaluation Indicator System for Rural Elderly Facilities Configuration in Datong City

China has entered a deeply aging society, and the aging problem in rural areas is particularly serious compared with that in cities and towns. In order to actively respond to the challenges of aging in rural areas, the Rural Revitalization Bureau of Datong City has issued the “Rural Nursing Care Project” Implementation Plan, exploring the establishment of a well-functioning, moderately scaled, and orderly functioning rural pension model. In this paper, through the field research of rural pension facilities and questionnaire interviews with the elderly, and using the SPSS factor analysis method for data statistics and analysis, we finally constructed the evaluation index system of rural pension facilities configuration in Datong City, and established the index basis for the construction of the evaluation system of rural pension facilities configuration, so as to make the sense of acquisition of the elderly in the countryside more adequate, the sense of well-being more sustainable, and the sense of security more secure, which is the most important task for the construction and improvement of the rural pension service system at the moment. It is an urgent task to improve the construction of rural pension service system.

Study on the Impact of Internet Usage, Aging on Farm Household Income

Increasing farmers’ incomes and empowering rural revitalization through the digital economy are important issues of widespread concern in our society today. From the perspective of aging, this paper uses the 2016, 2018, and 2020 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) data to examine the impact of Internet usage on farm household income in the realistic context of the severe aging situation in rural areas, to explore the specific mechanisms through which aging plays a role. A further comparative analysis of the heterogeneity of Internet usage and aging effects on different sources of farm household income is performed. The study finds that Internet use by farmers increases household income, but aging diminishes the boosting effect of Internet usage on household income. By reducing off-farm employment and increasing family care, aging reduces the Internet’s boosting effect on farm household income. Among household income sources, Internet usage significantly contributes to the growth of farm household wage income. Aging dampens the growth of all income sources except transfer income. Aging enhances the boosting effect of Internet usage on the transfer income of farm households; however, it weakens its boosting effect on the wage income of farm households. Therefore, there is an urgent need to promote the construction of rural digital infrastructure, improve farmers’ digital literacy, and improve rural pension infrastructure and services, to escort the digital transformation of agriculture and rural areas and the common prosperity of farmers.