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

描述（由申请人提供）：社会养老金有可能给许多传统社会中的大家庭带来相当大的变化，在这些社会中，多代人共同居住。然而，人们对养老金对老年人和大家庭生活的更全面影响知之甚少。几乎没有证据表明中国将在2030年成为世界上老龄化最严重的社会。区分实际的养老金影响与其他混杂因素（如年龄和队列相关的异质性和预期效应）也具有挑战性。该项目的总体目标是，在贫困率相对较高、老年人口基本上没有社会安全网的发展中国家，以创新方式严格评估社会养老金对养老金领取者、其大家庭及其社区的广泛影响。我们的目标是为政策制定者提供设计，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，我们研究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交网络的影响（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）。具体而言，目标1调查了养恤金意外之财是否减轻贫困，是否影响养恤金领取者对基本商品的消费，如基本营养素摄入和医疗保健，是否使老年父母更负担得起雇用服务，以取代劳动密集型家务、重症监护和成年子女提供的其他形式的工具性支持。目标2研究由于养老金意外之财而引起的代际关系和社会关系的变化。我们研究了养老金领取者的收入独立在多大程度上解放了成年子女的职业选择，迁移，生活安排，减少了与老年父母的家庭内转移，并挤出了非正式的社会保险。此外，我们研究了不同的约束条件，如流动性约束，健康约束，公共基础设施，调解异质养老金的影响。目的3评估养老金对老年人主观幸福感和心理健康的净影响。我们专注于异质性的影响，在亚人群的年龄分布，社会经济地位，贫困状况，教育，身体健康，少数民族地位，并获得公共基础设施。 对不同影响的估计将为理解将养恤金意外收入与养恤金领取人福祉联系起来的机制提供新的方向，并帮助决策者确定所需资源和具体的人口目标，以产生理想的政策成果。所有目标都利用最佳可用方法和多个中国数据集，并结合联合收割机来自一组卫生科学家和经济学家的专业知识，这些科学家和经济学家在数据和研究问题方面具有丰富的经验，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.