Abstract: Based on the data of China Family Panel Studies, this paper measures the level of family human capital investment by the acquisition of family education expenditure and educational opportunities and empirically examines the impact of the new rural insurance policy on the rural household human capital investment and its mechanism by making use of the instrumental variable estimation method of FE, DID and DDD. The findings show that, regardless from the county-level perspective or from the family perspective, the new rural insurance policy has a statistically significant positive impact on rural household human capital investment, and it is robust. The new rural insurance policy not only has a significant negative impact on the economic assistance provided by the younger generation to their older generations, but also significantly and positively stimulates the increase of household debt, that is, it is verified that from the perspective of inter-generation economic support and lending and borrowing constrains the new rural insurance policy has an effect on rural household human capital investment through the path of reducing economic assistance provided by the younger generation to their older generations and increasing family debts.

Key words: new rural pension insurance program; family human capital investment; educational opportunity