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| Does the Digital Divide Exacerbate the Financial Vulnerability of Older Households？ |
| LONG Haiming, YAN Wenzhe
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| College of Finance and Statistics, Hunan University |
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Abstract The financial vulnerability of older households is an important dimension in measuring the financial risk of older households. Since the turn of the 21st century, the degree of aging population in China has become increasingly severe, accompanied by challenges such as “growing old before becoming wealthy” and “growing old before being adequately prepared.” Factors such as insufficient reserves of old-age wealth, the relatively low financial literacy of the population, and increased health risks will all lead to an increase in the financial vulnerability of older households and a further accumulation of household financial risks. It is worth noting that, against the background of rapid population ageing in China, digital technology is also developing rapidly with the continuing expanding scale of the digital economy. Objectively speaking, the development of the digital economy, represented by digital finance, has significant “inclusive” characteristics, which can improve the financial accessibility of disadvantaged groups and thus enhance their ability to cope with risks. However, due to the influence of culture, skills, tools and health-related factors, older households, especially those in rural areas, face a substantial gap in digital access and usage compared to other groups, highlighting the problem of the digital divide among old age. The existence of the digital divide not only prevents older households from benefiting from digital advancements, but also deprives them of their existing resources, resulting in damage to household welfare. Therefore, it is necessary to explore in depth whether the digital divide affects the financial vulnerability of older households, and if it does, what is the specific mechanism of action？ Addressing the above questions is of great significance in preventing and resolving household financial risks and enhancing societal well-being.
This paper uses data from the 2017 and 2019 China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) to construct a household digital divide index and explore the impact of the digital divide on the financial vulnerability of older households as well as the specific mechanism of action. The findings are as follows. Firstly, the digital divide significantly exacerbates the financial vulnerability of older households. After a series of robustness tests, such as endogeneity treatment, replacing dependent and independent variables, replacing samples, and replacing models, the above conclusion remains robust. At the same time, it implies that narrowing the digital divide in old age is conducive to reducing household financial vulnerability. Secondly, the mechanism through which the digital divide affects older households' financial vulnerability is mainly reflected in the following three aspects: weakening social networks, increasing health risks and aggravating financial exclusion. Thirdly, further analyses show that different sub-dimensions of the digital divide significantly exacerbate the financial vulnerability of older households. Fourth, heterogeneity analyses reveal that the impact of digital divide on household financial vulnerability is more pronounced among relatively disadvantaged older households such as those in rural areas, those with low human capital and those without commercial insurance.
This study contributes to the existing literature in the following ways. Firstly, it adopts appropriate methods to measure the current digital divide and financial vulnerability of elderly households in China, and systematically analyses the relationship between the two, expanding the breadth of research on the financial problems of elderly households. Secondly, it clarifies the mechanisms through which the digital divide affects the financial vulnerability of elderly households from different perspectives, such as weakening social networks, increasing health risks and aggravating financial exclusion, and explores the different impacts of urban-rural and household characteristics and heterogeneity of household head characteristics, so as to provide useful insights for the implementation of policies related to more efficiently managing the digital divide in old age and reducing the financial vulnerability of households.
The policy implications of this paper lie in the following. Firstly, it is necessary to pay attention to and prevent and resolve the financial risks of older households. Narrowing the digital divide is one of the effective strategies to reduce the financial vulnerability of older households. Policymakers should strengthen the top-level institutional design, improve as soon as possible the system of laws, regulations and regulatory systems with the core objective of narrowing the digital divide in old age, and establish a long-term mechanism to solve this issue. Secondly, narrowing the digital divide among the elderly hould focus on two key areas. On the supply side, improving the accessibility of the Internet to elderly households, accelerating the construction of digital infrastructure, and increasing the penetration rate of smartphones and other Internet devices. For example, initiatives such as the construction of digital villages and the Internet equipment project in the countryside can help rural elderly groups overcome the problem of “tool exclusion”. On the demand side, it is necessary to make joint efforts to improve the Internet usage of elderly households from both the supply side and the demand side, not only to deepen the ageing of Internet applications and accessibility transformation, but also to strengthen the cultivation of digital literacy among the elderly through various means, so as to help them integrate into the digital society as soon as possible, and share the digital dividends.
This paper initially establishes a theoretical framework of the digital divide affecting the financial vulnerability of elderly households, and conducts empirical tests and puts forward targeted policy recommendations. However, there are still the following aspects for further exploration: firstly, the empirical data on older households can be further updated in terms of years of data to understand the development of digital divide and financial vulnerability of older households. Secondly, the impact of the digital divide on the financial vulnerability of older households is not only an economic issue, but also a multifaceted challenge related to the ability of the older population to better integrate into the digital society, which should be researched from the perspectives of sociology, demography and psychology in a cross-cutting and comprehensive manner in the future, so as to obtain more actionable research results.
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Received: 06 May 2024
Published: 02 December 2024
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