【英语财经】新兴经济体国民储蓄习惯大不同 Asians save, but Latin Americans spend

Many financial market participants view emerging markets as one amorphous bloc but, in reality, the differences between the countries and regions of the EM firmament can far outweigh their similarities.

One glaring example of this is in their household savings rates. People in emerging Asia typically saved 41.5 per cent of their income last year, according to the International Monetary Fund, the highest rate in the world.

In stark contrast, those in Latin America put aside just 17.6 per cent, and sub-Saharan Africans just 13.7 per cent.

The latter can be excused their low savings levels. With per capita gross domestic product of just $3,800 in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms, far too many Africans simply lack the wherewithal to save.

But the typical Latin American has no such excuse. Their per capita income by this measure is $15,400, above the emerging market average of $10,600.

Those living in what the IMF defines as “emerging and developing Asia” (a grouping that excludes Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore, deemed emerging by some) are markedly poorer, earning an average of $9,900 in PPP terms last year. Yet their savings rate towers over anywhere else on the planet.

These patterns hold pretty much across their respective regions. As the chart shows, savings rates are higher in 12 of the 13 largest emerging Asian economies than in any of the eight Latam heavyweights.

This pattern holds almost irrespective of whether an Asian country is richer than its peers in Latin America (eg Singapore, with a per capita GDP of $85,300 or Taiwan at $46,800) or poorer (such as Bangladesh at $3,600 or Vietnam, $6,000). The only exception is Pakistan.

As such, some believe the explanation for the divergent behaviour is largely cultural.

“As an Indian, when you grow up in a scarce resource economy you learn to preserve resources and save,” says Rahul Chadha, chief investment officer at Mirae Asset Management.

“If you talk to an Indian 30-year-old, his first priority would be to pay the mortgage and the same would be the case in China,” says Mr Chadha, who adds that the family-based pooling of wealth common in countries such as India means “leverage is frowned upon”.

Marios Maratheftis, chief economist at Standard Chartered, also believes that when it comes to Asia’s exceptionalism “part of it is cultural”. Nevertheless, he believes this is far from uniform with, for example, Malaysia having “a higher debt service ratio in its household sector than the US had in 2007” in the lead-up to the financial crisis.

“One take on it is that it’s all cultural, that Latin Americans live for the moment and Asians are all very diligent and hard-working and have a natural tendency to save,” says Neil Shearing, chief emerging markets economist at Capital Economics.

However, while Mr Shearing says “there might be something to that” he believes such an answer is also “slightly lazy”.

“It’s easy to say that in Brazil, they like football and samba and they sit on the beach and they spend all the money they get.

“But the Philippines has very low domestic savings rate [with gross savings 23.7 of GDP last year, the IMF estimates], whereas China has a high one [46 per cent]. If it is all cultural, and all Asians are the same, then why is it different within regions?” he asks.

Mr Shearing believes a bigger factor is the level of state welfare provision, with many Asians choosing to save more to compensate for the relatively threadbare safety nets common in the region.

Brazil, for instance, has a “wide safety net and a pension system where you have to make almost minimal contributions in return for a decent pension”, he says.

Replacement ratios, which measure an individual’s post-retirement income relative to their pre-retirement salary, “are among the highest in the world [in Brazil] and all funded by government. In Asia, welfare safety nets are much smaller,” says Mr Shearing.

Mr Maratheftis agrees, arguing that in the likes of India, Indonesia and China, a lot of household saving is “precautionary”, that would not exist if these countries had better publicly-funded healthcare or pension systems.

As for Latin America, he believes that a continent notorious for “a history of high inflation wiping out savings” is unlikely to be one where high levels of saving have become the norm.

Mr Shearing believes another piece of the jigsaw, and one that can help explain the divide between China and the Philippines, is demographics.

The Philippines has a much younger population than its northern neighbour (with a median age of 23.2 versus 36.8 in China, according to the CIA World Factbook), and older workers tend to save more for retirement, he argues.

The question of whether or not a high or low savings rate is preferable, and thus which continent has a better model, probably comes down to personal opinion.

Mr Shearing points out that a minimum level of domestic savings is necessary to fund investment, unless a country opts to rely on foreign funding, which can have a nasty habit of evaporating just when it is most needed.

The downsides of a Brazilian-style welfare state are also apparent at present, with the federal government struggling to find the spending cuts deemed necessary to tackle a budget deficit running at more than 10 per cent of GDP, given that around 95 per cent of government spending, in areas such as pensions and education, is earmarked by the constitution.

Given the country’s mix of relatively low pension savings but relatively generous pension provision, with the shortfall covered by the government, it is perhaps unsurprising that Brazil’s pension system is widely perceived as heading for the rocks.

Allianz rated Brazil as having the second least sustainable pension system among 50 countries in 2014 (better only than Thailand), while Mercer last year ranked it as the third least sustainable (ahead of Italy and Austria) among 25 states.

Mr Shearing goes further, arguing against Brazil-style welfare states that “extend right up the income distribution” as “the people who benefit the most tend to be middle and upper classes who get good pensions”.

On the other hand, it is likely that China would have more success in its ongoing drive to rebalance its economy away from investment to consumption if it was to beef up its welfare system, reducing the need for households to make precautionary savings.

“If you get improvements in welfare, that would help,” says Mr Maratheftis.

An alternative view would be that, in an increasingly globalised and materialistic world, younger Asians will start to behave more like their peers elsewhere, irrespective of government policies.

Mr Chadha says he is far from convinced his own children or grandchildren will have the same desire to save as his generation of Indians did, while his younger Chinese colleagues also appear to be bucking the trend of their countrymen and women.

“I’m surprised how much they spend. They have a different perspective towards life,” he reports.

很多金融市场参与者都将新兴市场视为一个松散的群体，但实际上，在新兴市场世界中，国与国、地区与地区之间的差异可能远远超过相似之处。

其中一个明显的例子体现在家庭储蓄率上。根据国际货币基金组织(IMF)的数据，去年亚洲新兴经济体的民众一般将收入的41.5%储蓄起来，储蓄率是全世界最高的。

与之形成鲜明对比的是，拉丁美洲的国民储蓄率仅为17.6%，而撒哈拉以南非洲地区的储蓄率仅为13.7%。

后一地区的储蓄水平这么低是有原因的。以购买力平价(PPP)计算，撒哈拉以南非洲地区的人均国内生产总值(GDP)仅3800美元——太多的非洲人只是没钱储蓄。

但是，拉美人一般不存在这种借口。以购买力平价计算，拉美的人均国民收入为15400美元，高于新兴市场10600美元的平均水平。

那些被IMF定义为“亚洲新兴和发展中经济体”（不包括香港、台湾、韩国和新加坡这几个在一些人看来也属于新兴世界的经济体）的民众明显更贫困，以购买力平价计算，去年该地区的人均国民收入为9900美元。不过，他们的储蓄率居全球之冠。

这些储蓄模式在它们各自所属地区的基本每个经济体都成立。如下面的图表所示，亚洲13个最大的新兴经济体中有12个的储蓄率均高于拉美八大新兴经济体。



无论是比拉美新兴经济体更富有的亚洲新兴经济体（比如人均GDP为85300美元的新加坡和人均GDP为46800美元的台湾），还是更贫困的（比如人均GDP为3600美元的孟加拉国或是人均GDP为6000美元的越南），这种模式基本上都成立，唯一的例外是巴基斯坦。

因此，一些人认为这种储蓄行为上的差异主要是由于文化原因。

“作为一个印度人，当你在资源稀缺的经济中成长时，你会学会保存资源和存钱，”未来资产资产管理公司(Mirae Asset Management)的首席投资官拉胡尔?查达(Rahul Chadha)表示。

“如果你跟一个30岁的印度人聊一聊，你就会知道，他的首要任务是还房贷，中国的情况也是一样，”查达表示。他补充称，在印度这样的国家，每个家庭往往都有自己的家庭共用财富，这意味着“贷款是让人皱眉头的事情”。

渣打银行(Standard Chartered)首席经济学家马里奥斯?马拉泰蒂斯(Marios Maratheftis)也认为，亚洲存在这种特殊性的“部分原因是文化”。话虽如此，他相信亚洲并不全都如此，例如马来西亚“家庭的债务收入比率(debt service ratio)就比2007年（金融危机到来前）的美国更高”。

“一种看法是，这完全是因为文化，拉美人活在当下，而亚洲人全都非常勤奋、努力工作、天生爱存钱，”凯投宏观(Capital Economics)首席新兴市场经济学家尼尔?希林(Neil Shearing)表示。

然而，尽管希林表示“这或许有些道理”，但是他认为这样的答案也“有点偷懒”。

“巴西人热爱足球和桑巴、喜欢坐在沙滩上休闲、有多少花多少，这样的答案说起来容易。”

“但是菲律宾的家庭储蓄率非常低（IMF估计，去年该国的国民储蓄相当于GDP的23.7%），而中国的储蓄率较高（46%）。如果完全是因为文化差异，并且所有的亚洲人都一样，那么地区内部为什么有差别？”他问道。

希林认为，更大的原因在于国家福利保障水平，很多亚洲人选择多存钱，以弥补该地区普遍相对薄弱的安全网。

他称，例如，巴西拥有“覆盖广泛的安全网和养老金制度，你只需要缴纳一点点钱就能换取体面的养老金”。

养老金替代率是衡量个人退休后收入相对退休前工资有多高的指标。巴西的养老金替代率“居于全球最高之列，而且全部由政府支付，在亚洲，福利安全网覆盖面要小得多”，希林表示。

马拉泰蒂斯对此也表示赞同，他认为，在印度、印尼和中国之类的国家，很多家庭存钱是“为有备无患”，如果这些国家拥有更好的公费医疗体系和养老金制度，人们就不会存钱了。

至于拉美，他认为在这个有着“高通胀吞噬存款的不光彩历史”的地区，较高的储蓄水平不太可能成为常态。

希林认为，存款差异的另一个原因是人口统计特征，这也有助于解释中国和菲律宾之间的差异。

菲律宾的人口比中国年轻得多（据《中情局世界概况》(CIA World Factbook)数据显示，菲律宾人口的年龄中位数为23.2岁，中国为36.8岁）。他认为，年龄较大的劳动者往往为退休储蓄更多钱。

有关高（或低）水平的储蓄率是否更好、乃至亚洲和拉丁美洲的储蓄模式哪种更好的问题，很可能仁者见仁智者见智。

希林指出，家庭储蓄率有支撑投资所必需的最低水平——除非这个国家选择依靠往往在最需要的时候跑得一干二净的外国资金。

目前，巴西式福利国家的坏处也很明显：解决（相当于GDP逾10%的）预算赤字需要削减支出，但鉴于约有95%的政府支出（比如在养老金和教育等领域）是由宪法规定的，巴西联邦政府无处下手。

考虑到巴西的养老金储蓄水平相对较低、但养老金供给又比较慷慨（缺口由政府填平），人们普遍认为巴西的养老金体系正在走向毁灭或许就不足为奇了。

2014年，安联集团(Allianz)认为巴西的养老金体系是50个国家中第二难以持续的（仅好于泰国）；去年，美世(Mercer)将巴西的养老金体系列为25个国家中第三难以持续的（好于意大利和奥地利）。

希林还更进一步，反对巴西这类“直接促进收入分配向上倾斜”的福利国家，因为“受益最大的往往是拥有丰厚养老金的中上层阶级”。

另一方面，如果中国巩固其福利体系、降低家庭的预防性存款需求，它正在进行的从投资拉动型转向消费拉动型的经济再平衡将取得更多成功。

“如果你的福利得到改善，会对此有帮助，”马拉泰蒂斯称。

另一种观点是，在这个日益全球化和物质化的世界，无论政府的政策如何，年轻一代的亚洲人都将表现得更像其他地区的同龄人。

查达称他根本不相信他自己的下一代或再下一代会像他这一代印度人一样爱存钱，与此同时，他年轻的中国同事似乎也在逆转中国人的储蓄趋势。

“他们花钱的手笔让我感到吃惊。他们有不同的生活态度。”他表示。

译者/马柯斯