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. 2023 Jan 17;20(3):1696.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph20031696.

Micro-Household Human Capital Investment Decisions and a Simulation Study from the Intergenerational Conflict Perspective

Qiling Lu  1 , Jing Hua  1
Affiliations

Micro-Household Human Capital Investment Decisions and a Simulation Study from the Intergenerational Conflict Perspective

Qiling Lu et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

Education is highly valued in Asian families. However, as family members age, competition for intra-family resources affects children's actualization in the family, which impacts the family's future capital. However, most existing studies have interpreted the family's intergenerational conflicts in terms of care services for older adults, and few have analyzed and simulated intra-family competition based on the intergenerational conflict. This study introduces a multi-agent simulation approach to observe micro-households' educational investment choices under the dual pressures of retirement and childcare. This measure captures households' investment choices and provides a decision basis for given households. Using data from the China Family Panel Study for 2014, 2016, and 2018, we explore the impact of these dual pressures on household educational expenditures and their differences across urban and rural areas, household aging, and income samples. We also simulated the micro-households' investment choices under these dual pressures to observe that these pressures reduce investments in educational human capital in these "sandwich-like" households. The simulation results suggest that households with high childcare stress invest more in education than those with a high retirement burden. Moreover, income growth can mitigate the dual stress "crowding-out" effect on education, which is most pronounced in low-income, high childcare-stress households.

Keywords: childcare burden; crowding-out effect; family educational investment; multi-agent simulation; population aging.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The decision-making mechanism of households’ human capital investments.
Figure 2
Figure 2
The multi-agent simulation process.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Simulated working area.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Family decision-making process from the multi-agent simulation.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Simulation process of education investment for low- and middle-income households under income growth.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Simulation results of educational investments for low-income households.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Simulation results of educational investments for middle-income households.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Simulation results of educational investments for middle-income households.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Growth in average educational investments, with increasing income for low- and middle-income households.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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