교육비 부담이 가계 저축 및 소비행태에 미치는 영향

Abstract

Korean parents are shouldering a heavy financial burden in educating their children. According to OECD data, Korea’s public educational expenditures by the private sector are greatest among OECD countries. In addition, the educational expenses have been getting more important in the household spending. The surging financial burden from the educational expenses is becoming one of the significant social issues in Korea. However, rigorous researches on this issue have been limited compared to the socio-economic importance of education in Korea. As such, this paper analyzes how the increasing burden of educational expenditures affects the household saving and consumption behaviors. Theoretically, households take simultaneously into account both returns and risks on investment in various assets when they make a decision on the optimal allocation between consumption and saving, leading to the optimal portfolio. As an example, given the budget constraints, an increase in investments in human capital might well lead to a decrease in other financial asset accumulation. Accordingly, the paper analyzes empirically the simultaneity of decisions on the resource allocation between educational expenditures and other financial savings with the bivariate Tobit model to reflect the characteristics of the observed variables In the data set. The model is often employed when the disturbance terms related to two variables we focus on are jointly normally distributed, and this joint estimation may give us the gain in efficiency when there exists a correlation between these variables. Also, I adopt the SUR (Seemingly Unrelated Regression) model and a panel estimation to rigorously examine the possibility of consumption adjustments to internally finance educational expenses. The results of the analyses are that the estimated correlation coefficient between the educational expenditures and savings is negative as I expected, indicating that most of the households would finance additional educational expenses by reducing their saving and other consumption. Furthermore, it implies that leaving current consumption aside, an increase in educational expenditures on their children would have a negative influence on their own retirement plan.