IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0332318.html

Education debt and household consumption upgrading: Positive incentives or inhibitions?

Author

Listed:
  • Mianbi Xie
  • Xin Chen
  • Yingying Zhao

Abstract

Household education debt is closely related to household consumption, and education itself is also a developmental high-quality consumption. Based on the panel data of five phases of the China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) from 2013 to 2021, this paper explores the impact of households’ education debt on improving household consumption enthusiasm and consumption upgrading with households as the basic unit. The study finds that education debt can significantly promote the upgrading of household consumption. Mechanism analysis shows that education debt can promote the upgrading of household consumption by improving the level of Internet consumption, and there are different degrees of moderating effect on household risk attitude. Heterogeneity analysis shows that household education debt has a significant positive effect on the consumption of urban and rural areas, high-financially literate and middle- and low-income households, as well as middle-leveraged households. The conclusions of this study enrich the research on the influencing factors and mechanisms of household consumption upgrading, broaden the research boundary of household debt and consumption, and have important implications for promoting education equity and consumer demand in China.

Suggested Citation

  • Mianbi Xie & Xin Chen & Yingying Zhao, 2025. "Education debt and household consumption upgrading: Positive incentives or inhibitions?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 20(10), pages 1-26, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0332318
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0332318
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0332318
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0332318&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0332318?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jo Blanden, 2004. "Family Income and Educational Attainment: A Review of Approaches and Evidence for Britain," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 20(2), pages 245-263, Summer.
    2. LI, Hongyi & HUANG, Liang, 2009. "Health, education, and economic growth in China: Empirical findings and implications," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 374-387, September.
    3. Ni, Junwei & Gao, Yidan, 2025. "Opportunities for higher education for children, financial literacy and household capital," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    4. Jacob Lockwood & Douglas A. Webber, 2023. "Non-Completion, Student Debt, and Financial Well-Being: Evidence from the Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking," FEDS Notes 2023-08-21, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Cheng, Yawen & Kong, Dongmin & Wang, Qin, 2023. "Parents' early experience and children's years of schooling: The long-term impact of son preference," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    2. Arnaud Chevalier & Colm Harmon & Vincent O’ Sullivan & Ian Walker, 2013. "The impact of parental income and education on the schooling of their children," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 2(1), pages 1-22, December.
    3. Nazlı Ceylan Sungur & Ece C. Akdoğan & Soner Gökten, 2024. "Health Capital and a Sustainable Economic-Growth Nexus: A High-Frequency-Data Analysis during COVID-19," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(10), pages 1-31, May.
    4. Marisa Hidalgo-Hidalgo & Iñigo Iturbe-Ormaetxe, 2018. "Long-run effects of public expenditure on poverty," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 16(1), pages 1-22, March.
    5. Vignoles Anna F & Powdthavee Nattavudh, 2009. "The Socioeconomic Gap in University Dropouts," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 9(1), pages 1-36, April.
    6. Hoang, Thu, 2025. "The effect of home countrys income on immigrant-origin childrens education: Evidence from Australia," Warwick-Monash Economics Student Papers 84, Warwick Monash Economics Student Papers.
    7. Arnaud Chevalier & Colm Harmon & Vincent O'Sullivan & Ian Walker, 2011. "The Impact of Parental Earnings and Education on the Schooling of Children," Working Papers 201112, Geary Institute, University College Dublin.
    8. Howley, Peter, 2017. "Less money or better health? Evaluating individual’s willingness to make trade-offs using life satisfaction data," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 53-65.
    9. Vandenberghe, Vincent, 2007. "Family income and tertiary education attendance across the EU: an empirical assessment using sibling data," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 6214, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    10. Abdul Wahab, Abdul Azeez Oluwanisola & Kefeli, Zurina & Hashim, Nurhazirah, 2018. "Investigating The Dynamic Effect of Healthcare Expenditure and Education Expenditure On Economic Growth in Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC)," MPRA Paper 90338, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 19 Oct 2018.
    11. Antonio Di Paolo, 2012. "Parental Education And Family Characteristics: Educational Opportunities Across Cohorts In Italy And Spain," Revista de Economia Aplicada, Universidad de Zaragoza, Departamento de Estructura Economica y Economia Publica, vol. 20(1), pages 119-146, Spring.
    12. Jessica Vechbanyongratana & Sasiwimon Warunsiri Paweenawat, 2015. "Transfer Payments And Upper Secondary School Outcomes: The Case Of Low-Income Female Students In Thailand," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 60(05), pages 1-19, December.
    13. Wölfel, Oliver & Heineck, Guido, 2012. "Parental risk attitudes and children's secondary school track choice," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(5), pages 727-743.
    14. Mehmet Özbaş, 2020. "The Educational Inequalities in the Disadvantaged Social Strata of Romani Population," Poverty & Public Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 12(3), pages 218-235, September.
    15. Jose L. Vilchez, 2017. "The Solution for the Behavioural Constellation of Deprivation," Psychology and Developing Societies, , vol. 29(2), pages 246-263, September.
    16. Sami Chaabouni & Mounir Ben Mbarek, 2024. "What Will Be the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Human Capital and Economic Growth? Evidence from Eurozone," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 15(1), pages 2482-2498, March.
    17. Claire Crawford & Lindsey Macmillan & Anna Vignoles, 2015. "When and why do initially high attaining poor children fall behind?," DoQSS Working Papers 15-08, Quantitative Social Science - UCL Social Research Institute, University College London.
    18. Francesco Vona, 2011. "Does the Expansion of Higher Education Reduce Educational Inequality? Evidence from 12 European Countries," Documents de Travail de l'OFCE 2011-12, Observatoire Francais des Conjonctures Economiques (OFCE).
    19. Lacheheb, Miloud & Med Nor, Norashidah & Baloch, Imdadullah, 2014. "Health Expenditure, education and Economic Growth in MENA Countries," MPRA Paper 60388, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Xu Sun & Xiaolu Lei & Baisen Liu, 2021. "Mobility Divergence in China? Complete Comparisons of Social Class Mobility and Income Mobility," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 153(2), pages 687-709, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0332318. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.