在全球人口老龄化的大背景下，老年人口数量逐年增长。随着社会的发展和老年人对生活质量要求的提高，传统的养老方式已经无法满足现代老年人的养老需求，居家养老模式正在逐步向机构养老模式转型。为满足机构养老的养老需求，开发商需要投入大量资金完成康养中心、医疗护理机构等适老化设施的建设。美国在20世纪70年代对不动产投资信托基金（REITs）的大力发展，为养老机构提供了新的融资渠道，推动了美国养老医疗产业的发展。同时，以养老地产项目为基础的养老REITs目前在美国已经发展到较为成熟的阶段，拥有千亿级的市场规模。养老REITs作为优质的金融产品，在不同的经济周期阶段均表现出稳定的投资回报和较小的价格波动，为投资者带来较为可观的收益，深受投资者的青睐。因此，本文旨在通过对美国养老REITs的收益影响因素进行研究，总结相关经验规律，为投资者在进行REITs相关投资决策时提供参考依据。本文首先对养老地产及养老REITs的相关概念进行介绍以及对美国养老REITs的发展现状进行阐述，并理论分析了影响养老REITs收益的潜在因素；其次通过构建向量自回归模型（VAR模型），运用脉冲响应和方差分解的方法，对养老REITs的影响因素进行实证分析。研究结果表明，养老REITs对自身波动的变化最敏感，经济周期、通货膨胀、商业地产价格和利率与养老REITs收益率正相关，而标普500指数与养老REITs收益率负相关。根据以上结果，本文得出美国养老REITs拥有较好的抗周期能力、抗通胀能力以及分散风险的能力；最后，由于我国REITs市场尚在起步阶段且同样面临老龄化问题，本文尝试从美国养老REITs成功经验出发，对我国养老REITs发展提出启示。
The aging population is now a global issue, leading to a rising number of elderly people year by year. With the development of the society and the improvement of the quality of life, the traditional way of in-home care can no longer meet the needs of the elderly. Senior housing and nursing facilities have become the mainstream of caregiving. In the 1970s, the rapid development of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) in the U.S. provided a new financing channel for senior housing institutions and promoted the development of the US senior housing industry. At the same time, healthcare REITs have now developed to a more mature stage in the U.S., with the market size of over $100 billion. As financial products, healthcare REITs have shown stable investment returns and limited price fluctuations under different economic situations and are well received by investors.Therefore, this paper aims to provide investors with suggestions when making investment decisions related to REITs, by examining the factors influencing the returns of healthcare REITs in the United States. This paper first introduces the concepts of senior housing, healthcare REITs, and current status of healthcare REITs in the United States, and theoretically analyzes the potential factors affecting healthcare REITs return. Then, by constructing a VAR model, specifically using the impulse response and variance decomposition methods, the influencing factors of healthcare REITs have been empirically analyzed. The empirical results show that healthcare REITs are most sensitive to their own changes. Further, GDP, inflation level, commercial property price level and federal interest rate are positively correlated with healthcare REIT returns, while S&P 500 index are negatively correlated with healthcare REIT returns. Based on the above results, we conclude that U.S. healthcare REITs are resistant to economic situation, inflation and is able to diversify risk in the portfolio. Finally, since China REITs market is still in its early stage and also facing the aging problem, this paper attempts to present insights for the future development of healthcare REITs in China based on the results of the study.
