| With the economic development in general, the human life expectancy increased accordingly, and the population aging issue became a common challenge faced by the majority of nations. Regardless of theoretical analyses or referring to the historical experience of developed societies, the results reveal that the population aging will induce considerable impacts on several social-economic aspects in some extent. The presence of intergenerational conflicts might be caused by the distinctiveness of individual requirements and preferences among different age groups. Thus, not only population aging changed the demographic structure, but also changed the benefit pattern and political pattern of the society. Intergenerational conflicts provide a new perspective to study the effect of population aging. On the one hand, the public policy making might preserve biases towards elderly population under the pressure of aging issues. On the other hand, it also needs to consider whether the pathways and outcomes of the policies will be affected by the tendency of aging.For the purpose of demonstrating the above discussions, this paper conducts seven sections. First, based on Chinese unique background of aging issues and relative literature reviews, the paper provides the theoretical explanation and empirical research on the impacts of aging population on public policies. Besides, the economic explanations and research progress of intergenerational conflicts will be illustrated accordingly. By utilizing micro data of national survey, it examines the existence of intergenerational conflicts on the individuals'subjective intention of public resources allocation and the subjective attitudes of the elders and youths on inflation and unemployment. Moreover, by applying provincial panel data, it investigates the impacts of aging population on the intensity of public expenditure structural as well as the relationship between inflation and unemployment rate. In last section, the corresponding policy recommendations will be given based on the research outcomes.As the main component of paper, the empirical study focuses on the intergenerational conflicts of individuals'subjective attitudes and explanation of impacts of aging population on public policies based on the perspective of intergenerational conflicts, the major findings are displayed as follow.First, the conflicts exist among the preference of individuals on allocation of public resources. According to the empirical study based on micro survey evidence of CGSS 2005 and CGSS 2006, it reveals that the older the residents are, the lower supportiveness of public education expenditure they perceive. Meanwhile, as the age growing, people are more likely to believe that the health care service, pension and other elder people related government spending are much more important and essential compare to public education expenditure.Second, since the existence of intergenerational conflicts, the aging issue significantly affects the decisions of government expenditural structural. According to the analysis of 2001 to 2010 provincial panel data, the degree of aging has significant negative effect on the public education spending. On the contrary, there is no significant influence on other public expenditures except education. Moreover, it also shows the aging issue only has significant negative effect on public education expenditure rather than all types of educational spending in the entire society. The outcome implies that residents intend to raise the household spending on education in order to enhance the competitive advantage of young generation compare to the high reliance on public sector for elder generation. It is the game of public sector and private sector on resource allocation under Chinese unique background and process of aging issue. The government behaviour of resource allocation is consistent with residents'subjective desire.Third, the intergenerational conflicts also exist on preference on inflation and unemployment. Inflation and unemployment rate are important indicators of monetary policy transmission path, and they have a negative relationship. Using CGSS2010, the empirical study find that inflation has greater impacts on happiness and preference for redistribution among elder generation. Correspondingly, unemployment rate has greater influence on young people in terms of happiness and preference of redistribution.Fourth, since the existence of intergenerational conflicts, the aging population has significant impact on the transmission path of monetary policies. This paper constructs a theoretical model and utilize 2001-2012 provincial panel data for empirical research. The results show that the greater the aging population, the lower elasticity of substitution between inflation and unemployment rate. The elder show great concern on low inflation rate, while the younger prefer the low unemployment rate. Due to the intergenerational conflict, the decreasing tendency of tolerance of inflation in entire society appears when aging issue becomes worse.There are three major policy implications. First, the positive responding should be hold towards the impacts of aging population on labour supply, consumption, investment and other aspects. It also recommends government need to maintain the stable economic growth in order to ensure the effectiveness and completeness of social security system. Meanwhile, it suggests that government should accelerate the establishment of old-age security system for reducing the pressure on public finance by referring to developed counties'experience on commercial insurance and family provision. Second, the government need to understand and deal with intergeneration conflicts on aging issue objectively. The adjustment of relative policies should be processed rational. For instance, government should balance the expenditure on education and elder-relate spending for avoiding short-term orientation. Third, government should provide several policies or public services with intergenerational positive externality in order to reduce or reconcile the intergenerational conflicts. |
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