Is the age structure of the population one of the determinants of the household saving rate in China? A spatial panel analysis of provincial data

In this paper, we use provincial panel data on China for the 2002-19 period to conduct a spatial autocorrelation analysis of household saving rates as well as a dynamic panel analysis of the determinants of household saving rates using a spatial Durbin model. To summarize our main findings, we find that, in China, the household saving rate shows significant positive spatial autocorrelation with an overall "high-high" and "low-low" clustering pattern, that, as predicted by the life-cycle hypothesis, the youth dependency ratio and the old-age dependency ratio have a negative and significant impact on the household saving rate, and that the logarithm of per capita household disposable income, the regional economic growth rate, the share of the urban population, the industrialization rate, and the income disparity between urban and rural areas also have a significant impact on the household saving rate.