老年人口的消費行為：以剛退休人口進行前後配對的實證研究

CONSUMPTION DURING RETIREMENT: EVIDENCE USING A PROPENSITY SCORE MATCHINGMETHOD

相對於人口老化所引發有關財政負擔的爭論， 老年人口的消費行為與其福祉的變化則鮮少受到國際學者同等的關注。有鑑於此， 本文使用行政院主計總處1996–2006年的「家庭收支調查」，研究老年人口的消費行為。本文以調查年度當年退休的男性戶長家庭做為實驗組； 持續就業的男性戶長家庭做為向前配對的控制組、已退休的男性戶長家庭做為向後配對的控制組， 且利用鄰近配對法， 針對實驗組以及兩組控制組家庭進行前後配對， 以藉此獲得一男性戶長特質（包括教育程度、年齡、健康狀態與投保身份等） 與家庭結構相似但卻涵蓋生命週期各個階段的配對樣本。實證結果顯示居於財富分配第一等分位的家庭其「退休–消費」驟降的情形可能隱含相關家庭效用的減損。

It is widely acknowledged that population aging will exert intense fiscal pressure on public pension and health care programs. However, a focus on these financial costs has led to an unduly negative view of population ageing that neglects the well-being of older citizens. In this paper, we use the 1996–2006 waves of the Family Income and Expenditure Survey to study the effect of retirement on household nondurable expenditures. We construct a novel matched dataset using the nearest neighbor matching method in which the just-retired household heads serve as a treatment group, and both the employed and the retired household heads serve as a forward-matching and backward-matching control group, respectively. The empirical results suggest that there is a one-off drop in food expenditures at the time of retirement for households in the lowest wealth tertile. These results therefore imply that the quantity of food intake did deterioratewith retirement status for relatively poor households.