Does the Early Poverty Experience Reduce Elderly's Consumption?
With the continuous increase in the scale and proportion of the elderly population,developing the silver economy is not only an objective requirement for actively responding to population aging but also a crucial measure for expanding domestic demand.Based on the data from the CHARLS 2014 Chinese Resident Life Course Survey and 2018 survey,this paper empirically examines the impact of early poverty experience on the consumption of the elderly.The results show that according to life course theory,early poverty experience not only significantly reduces the consumption level of the elderly but also restrains the upgrading of the consumption structure.This conclusion still holds after addressing endogenous issues.Based on cumulative disadvantage theory,the study indicates that early poverty experience has a triple cumulative disadvantage effect on the consumption of the elderly.That is,by shaping thrifty consumption habits,reducing cognitive ability and deteriorating health conditions,the consumption of the elderly is reduced.Since individual upward social mobility and positive interaction with others can alleviate the cumulative disadvantage effects caused by early poverty experience,this paper focuses on the possible positive impacts of family social capital and Internet applications.The study reveals that family social capi-tal can mitigate the negative impact of early poverty experience on the consumption of the elderly.However,due to the digital divide,Internet applications does not significantly promote the consumption of the elderly.In addition,in the heterogeneity analysis sections,the impacts of different types of poverty experience in early years on consumption are significatly different.The negative impacts of health and economic poverty experience on consumption are significant,but the impact of food poverty experience is negligible.This means that the health and economic poverty experience in early years has a significant cumulative disad-vantage effect,thus inhibiting the consumption level.The results of this paper not only enrich the findings of the impact of early experience on the elderly but also broaden the research perspective of elderly con-sumption,providing policy implications for the high-quality development of the silver economy.The policy implication is that the development of the silver economy should fully recognize the impact of early poverty experience on the consumption of the elderly in the life course.At the family level,build a social capital cultivation system to expand the social network of the family;at the community level,organize training activities to improve the cognitive ability and digital literacy of the elderly to spur consumption;at the government level,optimize elderly health services and social security policies to weaken the savings motive;reduce the cumulative disadvantage effect of early-life poverty experiences through a co-construction system of the family,community,and government.In the future,the public aging policy service system should be established from the perspective of covering the entire life cycle of childhood,adulthood and old age for the whole population.It should take into account the specific needs of people at different life cycle stages and break the cumulative disadvantage process through policy intervention,ultimately enhancing the well-being of the elderly.
Early ExperienceFamily Social CapitalElderly's ConsumptionSilver Economy