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Chipping In or Crowding-Out? The Impact of Pension Receipt on Older Adults’ Intergenerational Support and Subjective Well-Being in Rural China

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Abstract

With the introduction of the New Rural Social Pension Scheme (NRSPS), pension coverage in rural China has increased substantially during the last decade. We investigate how the new public pension benefits influence intergenerational transfers and subjective well-being of older adults in rural China using panel data from the 2011 and 2013 waves of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). The results of our first-difference regression models show that receiving a public pension goes along with an increase in intergenerational financial support and has a positive impact on the subjective well-being of older adults in rural China. Our analysis represents one of the first studies examining the effects of the introduction of the NRSPS from a longitudinal perspective. The results demonstrate that public pension benefits as a form of institutional financial support are beneficial to the well-being of older adults, while they do not hinder intergenerational exchange.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Tao Liu and the participants of the RC28 conference in Singapore for helpful comments on earlier versions of the paper as well as the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) team for providing data.

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  1. Centre for University Core, Singapore University of Social Sciences, 463 Clementi Road, Singapore, 599494, Singapore

    Pei-Chun Ko

  2. School for Social Sciences, University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany

    Katja Möhring

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Ko, PC., Möhring, K. Chipping In or Crowding-Out? The Impact of Pension Receipt on Older Adults’ Intergenerational Support and Subjective Well-Being in Rural China. J Cross Cult Gerontol 36, 139–154 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10823-020-09422-8

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