A Research On The Relationship Between The Demographic Dividend And Economic Growth In China

After World War Ⅱ, the East Asian region, which is represented by Japan and "Four Little Dragon" where the population structure shifted from high birthrate rate and high death rate and low natural growth rate to low birth rate, low death rate and low natural growth rate, has formed a period called the "demographic dividend window" which was good for economic growth. The results of research about "east Asian miracle" shows that making full use of the advantage of the demographic changes is one of the important reasons for the east Asian economic growth. Therefore, the relationship between demographic factors and economic growth is valued gradually. Likewise, in the process of demographic transition in China, the economic society steps to the period of demographic dividend when the working-age population takes a big proportion and the raising burden is lighter, to a certain extent, which also affects the economic growth of our country. However, as the acceleration of China’s aging population, disappearance of demographic dividend gradually, the variations of age structure will surely pass onto economic growth through a series of intermediate factors, including economic aspects and social aspects; including impacts on macro levels such as savings, consumption, investment and current account balance also with impacts on micro levels such as family structure variation, children raising and aged parents support. We need to make thorough analysis and research on the economic effects of the age structure variation, especially the conducting mechanism between age structure variation and economic growth, which is the starting point and purpose of this article.This paper firstly describes our country’s demographic dividend definitions, characteristics, and how to achieve the conditions portrayed; secondly for demographic dividend measure,this paper describes the status quo of China’s population bonus, then compares the demographic dividend from different perspectives; next analyzes the internal mechanism that demographic dividend acts on economic growth, then obtains demographic dividend contribution to economic growth by the use of simple mathematical derivation, and with the 1978-2012 years of empirical analysis of data from demographic dividend impact on economic growth, this paper concludes that a change in the total dependency ratio units, will lead to changes in economic growth reverse 0.1756 units, thus a decline in the total dependency ratio will promote economic growth; then discusses long-term economic growth cointegration relationship among demographic dividend, the savings rate,and economic growth, then establishes the error correction model; subsequently, this paper analyzes the demographic dividend changes on the impact of sustained economic growth using the United Nations data on China’s demographic dividend forecasts; lastly this paper proposes some policy recommendations on how to make full use of "post-demographic dividend" and discusses the demographic dividend reduction alternatives.