Do credit constraints affect households’ economic vulnerability? Empirical evidence from rural China

doi:10.1016/S2095-3119(20)63557-2

摘要/Abstract

摘要：

减贫仍然是发展中国家面临的主要挑战之一，在中国这样一个转型经济体中这一问题表现得尤为突出。基于反贫困的视角，文章利用2014年中国农村家庭收入调查 (CHIPs) 的数据，探讨和检验了正规信贷约束和非正规信贷约束对农户家庭经济脆弱性的影响。在有序probit模型的基础上运用控制函数方法纠正信贷约束的潜在内生性问题。研究结果显示，正规信贷约束和非正规信贷约束对农村家庭经济脆弱性具有稳健的显著积极影响，并且相对于非正规信贷约束而言，正规信贷约束的积极影响更大。进一步地，文章运用似不相关回归识别了信贷约束影响农村家庭经济脆弱性的作用机制。我们发现健康、信任、人均金融资产水平以及人均收入水平在信贷约束对农户家庭经济脆弱性的影响中发挥部分中介作用。其中，健康和人均收入水平发挥了主要的中介作用。据此，政策制定者应从金融供给侧和需求侧着手来提高农户信贷可得性以降低农户家庭经济脆弱性，特别地，政策制定者亦可通过提升农村居民健康水平和人均收入水平以达到降低农户家庭经济脆弱性之目的。

Abstract:

Poverty alleviation is still one of the major challenges in developing countries, especially in transitional economy like China. From the perspective of anti-poverty, this paper examines the impact of formal credit constraints (FCCs) and informal credit constraints (IFCCs) on economic vulnerability (EV) using the data from the China Household Income Project (CHIP) survey for 2013 (CHIPs 2013) of rural households. The potential endogeneity problem of credit constraints (CCs) is addressed by applying the control function approach within an ordered probit model. The results show that both FCCs and IFCCs have a robust positive and significant impact on the EV of rural households and that the impact of FCCs is greater than that of IFCCs. To identify the potential mechanisms through which CCs affect EV, the seemingly unrelated regressions are used and the potential intercorrelation among these mechanisms is examined. We find that the impact of CCs on EV is partly mediated by health, trust, per capita financial assets and per capita income, whereby health and per capita income contribute to most of the total indirect effect. Thus, policies focus on supply-side and demand-side to improve credit accessibility could reduce rural households’ EV, especially through its positive effect on health and per capita income.

Key words: credit constraints , economic vulnerability , causal mediation mechanisms , rural China

. [J]. Journal of Integrative Agriculture, 2021, 20(9): 2552-2568.

PENG Yan-ling, Yanjun REN, LI Hou-jian. Do credit constraints affect households’ economic vulnerability? Empirical evidence from rural China[J]. Journal of Integrative Agriculture, 2021, 20(9): 2552-2568.

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