Abstract: Based on the data of China’s household finance survey in 2013, this paper examines the indebted consumption behavior of China’s households from the perspective of life cycle and age structure. The results show that there exists life cycle effect in the impact of the age of household head on the indebted consumption behavior of China’s households. With the increase of the age of household’s head, the possibility of families with indebted consumption and the debt scale of house property, education and credit cards will show an inverted U-shaped distribution, while the debt scale of automobiles will decrease continuously. The aged population ratio will significantly reduce the possibility of households with indebted consumption and the scale of indebted consumption, the children proportion ration will significantly increase the possibility of households with indebted automobile consumption and the scale of debt in housing estates, automobile and credit card, and the 15-23 year-old population ratio will significantly increase the possibility and scale of households’ education liabilities. In this regard, the government and the financial institutions such as the banks should pay attention to the impact of life cycle and age structure on the consumer credit markets; they should meet the reasonable needs of residents’ consumer credit through institutional construction and credit product innovation, so as to stimulate the households’ consumption potential.

Key words: life cycle; age structure; indebted consumption