As we know, since 2022, Omicron mutants have blossomed everywhere in China, and all localities have taken more effective measures to block the flow of people and logistics, reducing many offline service consumption scenarios with the attributes of traveling and gathering people, and inhibiting the consumption growth of residents to a certain extent.
From the data point of view, in the total retail sales of social consumer goods in 2022, the year-on-year performance of commodity retail and catering income was not as good as that before the epidemic, and the catering income in11decreased by 5.4% year-on-year. Under normal circumstances, consumption and savings show a changing trend, consumption is suppressed, and savings will naturally rise.
At the same time, under the impact of the epidemic, it is difficult for many enterprises to carry out their business normally, and the pressure of production and operation has increased. Some companies even face the risk of layoffs and bankruptcy. Coupled with the long tail effect of the epidemic and the uncertainty of the future, many residents' income and work are no longer stable, and their sense of insecurity is rising, especially those low-and middle-income groups whose main source of income is wages, and they are more cautious about their future expectations.
From the data point of view, in 2022, on the one hand, residents' consumer confidence declined rapidly, on the other hand, the unemployment rate rose. As a result, many people's awareness of risk aversion has been strengthened again and again, which has triggered the rise of preventive savings.
In fact, the central bank conducted a round of questionnaire survey in the fourth quarter of 2022, and the results showed that the residents who tended to "save more" accounted for 6 1.8%, an increase of 3.7 percentage points over the previous quarter; Residents who tend to "spend more money" account for 22.8%, which is basically the same as last quarter; Residents who tend to "invest more" accounted for 15.5%, a decrease of 3.7 percentage points over the previous quarter; At the same time, the income perception index in the fourth quarter was 43.8%, down 3.2 percentage points from the previous quarter.
All these data can reflect that residents are increasingly willing to save preventive funds. From this perspective, the sharp increase in deposits in the residential sector seems to be understood as the "financial sequelae" caused by the epidemic.
It should be pointed out that in addition to the impact of the epidemic, there are two other factors that lead to the increase in residents' deposits:
First, the capital market was hit hard. Looking back on the whole year of 2022, affected by the Federal Reserve's interest rate hike, the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and other factors, the global capital market generally suffered a great impact. Many countries have experienced the double blow of stock and debt, and investors' risk appetite has declined and risk aversion has increased. In China, factors such as RMB depreciation and repeated epidemics are superimposed, and the market expectation is low, which has triggered a huge earthquake in the capital market. Not only did the stock market plummet, fund products withdrew sharply, but even bank wealth management products were "broken". As a result, the wealth of most ordinary investors has shrunk, and the willingness of funds to flow into the capital market has declined.
In contrast, bank deposits are safer and the income is more stable, so more and more people choose to deposit their money in banks, which are regarded as excellent havens for funds, and then the amount of deposits keeps increasing.
Second, the real estate industry is sluggish. According to the data of China Wealth Report 2022, nearly 70% of China residents' assets are physical assets, of which real estate accounts for an absolute advantage. However, since 2022, the real estate industry has been sluggish, some private housing enterprises have fallen into financing difficulties, and some areas have problems with Baojiao Building, and residents' willingness to buy houses has been greatly reduced. Some of them put the money originally intended to buy a house in the bank, which also pushed up the residents' deposits to some extent. ?
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People are saving more and more. Is this a good thing?
In a sense, the love of saving money embodies a frugal quality, which is also a traditional virtue of the Chinese nation and should be strongly advocated, but not from the perspective of economics.
Keynes, an economist, put forward the famous "paradox of thrift" in his book "General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money": thrift is a virtue for individuals or families, but not for the whole society, because the change of consumption will cause the change of national income in the same direction, the change of savings will cause the change of national income in the opposite direction, and thrift means the reduction of expenditure, which will lead to insufficient total social demand, and then lead to economic slowdown or even recession; In other words, although savings can pave the way for individuals to get rich, it is not conducive to economic and social prosperity if the whole country increases savings.
In fact, according to the general law of economic and social development in various countries, when the level of productivity is low and the economic foundation is weak, the whole society is relatively short of materials, and the market supply is far from meeting the demand. At this time, it is really necessary to advocate thrift, encourage residents to save more, realize the accumulation of funds, and then expand the scale of investment and improve production capacity.
However, with the development and progress of economy and society, the level of productivity has been greatly improved, material wealth has become increasingly rich, and the phenomenon of oversupply has gradually emerged. The improvement of income level makes residents have higher requirements for consumption. At this time, it is necessary to promote industrial upgrading by promoting consumption and expanding demand, so that the supply and demand sides can achieve a new dynamic balance at a higher level. If consumption is sluggish, it will inevitably restrict the production of all walks of life, thus affecting the pace of healthy and sustainable development of the national economy.
As far as China is concerned, affected by the epidemic and other factors, the consumer market continues to be under pressure, but there is also a lot of room for rebound. With the gradual liberalization of epidemic prevention and control, the unfavorable factors that once interfered with the operation of all walks of life will be weakened day by day. The high-level statement on "doing a good job in economic work" makes the national economic recovery in 2023 almost a foregone conclusion. In the recent Central Economic Work Conference, it was particularly emphasized that "the recovery and expansion of consumption should be given priority", which fully reflected the urgent hope of high-level officials to boost the consumer market.
In this process, the increase of passive savings and residents' preventive savings accumulated due to the limitation of consumption scenarios is expected to become an important force to support the growth of the consumer market in the future. However, it should be pointed out that the transformation from savings to consumption will inevitably take time to digest, and it is difficult to "pour out" in a short time in terms of rhythm for three reasons:
First, affected by the three-year epidemic, the balance sheet of the residential sector has been hit, especially for low-and middle-income people, and it will take some time to repair it. Objectively, the housing sector as a whole needs to reduce consumption and accumulate enough surplus;
Secondly, as mentioned above, the current consumer confidence of residents has fallen sharply, and there is no sign of reversal at present, reflecting that the impact of the previous epidemic has caused a great psychological impact on a considerable number of residents, which has changed the overall consumption expectation of residents' departments to a certain extent, forming the so-called "scar effect", and many people are hard to dare to spend in a short time;
Third, the key to boosting residents' consumption confidence lies in economic recovery, employment increase and income increase. Only when all aspects gradually return to the right track will residents' worries about future economic uncertainty tend to ease, which will take time to improve.
According to the research report of Huaxi Securities, at present, the excess savings of the residential sector is about 3.3 trillion yuan, and it will take about 3-4 years to convert all these 3.3 trillion yuan of excess savings into consumption, which means that there may be 8000-11000 billion yuan of excess savings flowing to consumption in 2023, accounting for about 20021year of social consumer goods. At the same time, referring to the experience of the United States, two quarters after the liberalization of epidemic prevention, excess savings will begin to be gradually released.
For this reason, the contribution of excess savings to consumption growth in 2023 may be moderate rather than non-violent, and the process is difficult to achieve overnight.
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It should be pointed out that there is also a mystery behind the current household savings structure.
Wind data shows that the proportion of time deposits in the residential sector has remained above 60% for a long time, and after entering 2022, the proportion has further increased to around 69%, while the proportion of demand deposits has declined again and again; At the same time, since 2022, the year-on-year growth rate of time deposits has not only continued to rise, but also significantly higher than demand deposits. It can be reflected that most of the excess savings in the residential sector come from the contribution of medium and long-term time deposits.
These medium and long-term new time deposits should be concentrated in middle and high-income groups. The reason is that according to the China Financial Report published by Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, from the data of China's savings structure, the savings of the households with the largest savings 10% account for 70% of the total savings, the households with more savings account for 25% of the total savings, and the remaining 50% households basically have no savings.
In addition, the main source of income for low-and middle-income groups is wages, while middle-and high-income groups have some property income. Under the influence of early epidemic factors, the balance sheet damage of low-and middle-income families is often significantly higher than that of high-and middle-income families, and their savings rate is likely to fall instead of rising, or even zero savings.
Considering that the marginal propensity to consume of high-income people is lower than that of low-income people, and the latter accounts for a large proportion of the total population, in order to boost consumption and promote economic recovery, we must pay attention to low-income people and tap their consumption potential by improving their situation.
So, what should be done specifically?
In the short term, issuing coupons is still an effective means to boost residents' consumption. But for those low-income families and poor groups, direct cash payment can also be considered. Because for most low-income families and poor people, their real situation is often that their spending power can't meet the standard of using coupons, that is, "what is lacking is not the coupons of 10 yuan, but the cash of 100 yuan", especially under the influence of the previous epidemic, many people's income has declined, and even the possibility of losing their income sources is not ruled out. On weekdays, we can only scrimp and save, make ends meet, and have no money for high consumption at all.
At the same time, low-income families and poor groups are more sensitive to income changes, and even a few hundred yuan of "windfall" can greatly improve their lives. In this sense, the effect of finding gold may be better than issuing coupons.
At the same time, efforts should be made to stabilize employment, especially to support small and medium-sized enterprises as an important carrier to absorb employment. Measures such as reducing taxes and fees, granting subsidies, reducing layoffs and increasing financial support should be taken to stabilize business operations, so that more low-and middle-income people can have stable jobs and income sources, thus boosting consumer confidence. Relevant departments should also formulate employment policies for vulnerable groups in the job market, improve the policies and systems for the protection of labor rights and interests, premium payment and remuneration for flexible employees, and better explore new space for consumption and employment.
In the long run, efforts should be made to improve the income level of low-and middle-income people, expand the proportion of middle-income groups as much as possible, and form an olive-shaped distribution pattern. Specifically, it is necessary to gradually increase the proportion of residents' income in the national income distribution and the proportion of labor remuneration in the initial distribution as the focus of adjusting income distribution, and in the process of redistribution, adjust the income gap between income subjects through fiscal and taxation means and pay attention to fairness.
In addition, we should constantly improve the social security system, further expand the coverage of social security, and intensify reforms in medical care, health, education and housing. , so as to make the system more reasonable, the mechanism more standardized, effectively reduce the worries of the majority of residents, and really let the people dare to spend, willing to spend.