关键词: 数字金融, 家庭债务, 债务负担, 收入增长效应, 收入不平等

Abstract: Under the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic, households used debt to meet the needs of consumption smoothing and asset allocation, helping to smooth out the fluctuations in household income and consumption caused by the impact of the pandemic. However, a disorderly expansion of debt will increase the debt burden of households and even threaten the stability of financial and economic systems through negative feedback effects. In recent years, the rapid development of digital finance has created a good external condition for meeting the capital needs of households. So, will the growth of digital finance lead to an increase in household debt burdens? On the one hand, digital finance forms an external financing market outside the banking system; on the other hand, digital finance makes the banking business cover a wider range of customers through competition effect. Both effects have altered the structure of financial supply and facilitated the expansion of household debt. If an increase in household debt is only used for consumption expenditure, the household debt burden will become heavier with the accumulation of consumption debts. At the same time, an increase in household debt does not necessarily increase the debt burden. Residents may use debt funds to support family entrepreneurship, optimize asset allocation, etc., resulting in income growth that will alleviate the debt burden on households. In addition, the macro-economic impact of the digital finance will also feed back household debt burdens. Therefore, the impact of digital finance on household debt burden is a complex system, and different motivations and mechanisms of indebtedness will have different impacts on household debt burden. It is particularly important to discuss how digital finance affects households' debt decision-making and debt burden, so that households can make reasonable use of the convenience brought by digital finance to alleviate negative impacts such as the epidemic while not continuously worsening household debt burden.
Using the matching data of Peking University Digital Financial Inclusion Index and China Household Finance Survey data (CHFS) for 2013, 2015, and 2017, this paper examines the impact of digital finance on household debt and debt burden. Heterogeneity analysis is carried out from the three aspects: digital finance sub-index, household characteristics and household debt status. This paper further discusses the macro and micro mechanisms of digital finance affecting household debt burden from the three aspects: consumption promotion effect, income growth effect and income inequality regulation effect.
The empirical results show that, overall, digital finance increases the probability and scale of household debt, and the debt burden of households considering the possible endogeneity problem, and the results are still valid by using instrumental variable regression. However, the results of the heterogeneity test show that digital finance does not necessarily increase the burden of household debt while increasing the probability and scale of household debt. The heterogeneity test of the digital finance sub-index shows that the depth of digital finance helps to alleviate household debt burden. The heterogeneity test of household characteristics shows that digital finance can help to reduce the debt burden of households with a high education level, but it has no significant impact on the debt burden of rural households. Heterogeneity tests based on household debt status show that digital finance can help alleviate the debt burden of households with reasonable levels of debt burden. The intermediary effect model is used to test the mechanism of digital finance affecting household debt burden. The results show that at the micro level, digital finance increases household debt and debt burden through consumption promotion effect, but it does not increase household debt burden while promoting household debt increase through income growth effect. At the macro level, digital finance simultaneously reduces the debt scale and alleviates the debt burden of households through the moderating effect of income inequality. The above results have certain enlightenment significance for fully understanding the impact of digital finance on household debt burden, and making good use of digital finance to meet household debt capital needs without increasing household debt burden.

Key words: digital finance, household debt, debt burden, increase income effect, income inequality