Old-Age Pension, Household Behavior Change and the Well-being of the Ederly

描述(申请人提供)：在许多传统社会中，多代人共同居住的社会养老金有可能给大家庭带来相当大的变化。然而，人们对养老金对老年人和大家庭生活的更完整层面的影响知之甚少。几乎没有证据表明中国会在2030年成为世界上最老龄化的社会。将养老金的实际影响与其他混杂因素区分开来也是一项挑战，例如年龄和队列相关的异质性和预期效应。该项目的总体目标是在贫困率相对较高、老年人口基本缺乏社会安全网的发展中背景下，以创新和严格的方式评估社会养老金对养恤金领取者、其大家庭及其社区的更广泛影响。我们的目标是为决策者提供设计、实施和升级农村养老金所需的知识基础。为了实现这一目标，我们考察了养老金的收入效应(目标1)，养老金对大家庭中的陪伴和支持以及参与社会网络的影响(目标2)，以及养老金对主观幸福感和心理健康的净影响(目标3)。具体地说，目标1调查养老金意外之财是否缓解了贫困，影响了养老金领取者对基本商品的消费，如基本营养素的摄取和医疗保健，并使老年父母更负担得起雇佣服务，以取代劳动密集型家务劳动、重症监护和由成年子女提供的其他形式的工具性支持。目标2研究因养老金意外之财而导致的代际关系和社会关系的变化。我们考察了养老金领取者的收入独立性在多大程度上解放了成年子女的职业选择、移民、生活安排，减少了与年迈父母的家庭内部转移，并挤出了非正式社会保险。此外，我们考察了不同的约束约束，如流动性约束、健康约束、公共基础设施，是如何调节异质性养老金影响的。目的3评价养老金对老年人主观幸福感和心理健康的净影响。我们侧重于通过年龄分布、社会经济地位、贫困状况、教育、身体健康、少数族裔状况和公共基础设施的使用情况对亚人群产生的异质性影响。估计不同的影响将为理解养老金意外之财与养老金领取者和援助政策制定者的福祉挂钩的机制提供新的方向，以确定所需的资源和具体的人口目标，以产生理想的政策结果。所有目标利用现有的最佳方法和多个中国数据集，并结合一群健康科学家和经济学家的专业知识，他们在数据和一系列研究问题方面拥有丰富的经验，以产生新的证据，最终目标是制定针对最脆弱亚群体的政策应对措施。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Social pensions have the potential to bring considerable changes to extended families in many traditional societies where multiple generations co-reside. However, very little is known about the impact of pension on more complete dimensions of lives of the older population and extended families. There is little evidence on China that will become the world's most aged society in 2030. It is also challenging to distinguish the actual pension impact from other confounded factors, such as age and cohort related heterogeneity and anticipation effects. The overall aim of this project is to innovatively and rigorously evaluate the broader impact of social pension on pensioners, their extended families and their community in the developing context where poverty rate is relatively high and social safety net is largely absent for the older population. We aim to provide policy makers with the knowledge base needed to design, implement, and upgrade rural pensions. To meet this aim, we examine income effect of pension (Aim 1), impact of pension on companionship and support in extended families and engagement in social networks (Aim 2), and the net impact of pension on subjective well-being and mental health (Aim 3). Specifically, Aim 1 investigates whether pension windfalls alleviate poverty, affect pensioners' consumption of basic goods, such as basic nutrients intake and medical care, and make hired services more affordable to elderly parents to substitute for labor-intensive household chores, intensive care and other forms of instrumental support provided by their adult children. Aim 2 studies changes in intergenerational relationships and social ties due to pension windfalls. We examine to what extent pensioners' income independence frees up adult children's occupational choices, migration, living arrangements, reduces intra-household transfers with elderly parents, and crowds out informal social insurance. Moreover, we examine how different binding constraints, such as liquidity constraint, health constraint, public infrastructure, mediate heterogeneous pension impacts. Aim 3 evaluates the net impact of pension on subjective well-being (SWB) and mental health of the older population. We focus on heterogeneous effects in sub-populations by age profile, SES, poverty status, education, physical health, minority status, and access to public infrastructure. Estimating the differential impacts will provide new directions for understanding the mechanism linking pension windfalls to well-being of pensioners and aid policymakers in determining the resources needed and specific population targets in order to generate desirable policy outcomes. All aims utilize the best available methods and multiple Chinese datasets and combine expertise from a group of health scientists and economists who have rich experience with the data and set of research questions to produce new evidence with the ultimate goal of developing policy responses that target the most vulnerable sub-population.