A Study of the Impact of Population Aging on the Effectiveness of Household Financial Asset Allocation

Based on the perspective of population aging, this paper explores the impact of aging shocks on household financial asset allocation behavior, and constructs cross-period tracking panel data based on the 2015, 2017, and 2019 China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) data to empirically investigate the mechanism by which population aging affects different dimensions of household financial asset allocation behavior. The results of the study find that (1) population aging significantly inhibits household portfolio effectiveness; and this conclusion still holds after replacing variables and robustness testing of the model. (2) The mechanism analysis illustrates that population aging affects household financial asset allocation effectiveness through wealth constraints and health risk paths. (3) Heterogeneity analysis illustrates that there is urban-rural and wealth heterogeneity in the impact of population aging on financial asset allocation. The negative impact of population aging on financial asset allocation is more pronounced in rural households and in households with low wealth levels.