Demographic Dividend,demographic Transition And Economic Growth

The demographic issue is related to the prosperity of the nation,the well-being of the people,and the destiny and future of the country.It is the most overall strategic issue of a country.At current,demographic situation becomes extremely severe in our country.On the one hand,not only has the demographic dividend declined and disappeared,but the low birth rate and the aging dilemma are also becoming increasingly prominent.On the other hand,the total population of our country is about to reach its peak,followed by a crisis of rapid decline.The results of the seventh national census also showed that China's fertility rate is gradually declining,and the demographic dividend has disappeared.At the same time,the per capita education level has continued to rise,and the demographic quality dividend has continued to highlight.China has entered a stage of modern demographic transition.For more than 40 years of reform and opening up,China's economy has developed rapidly and per capita income has risen sharply.The demographic dividend has played an important role in the rapid economic growth.However,with the decline in fertility,the disappearance of the demographic dividend,and the emergence of demographic transition issues such as serious aging,how to formulate effective population policies to achieve long-term balanced population development and improve the outstanding contribution of the demographic dividend to economic growth is imminent.Under this background,based on the demographic transition theory,quantity–quality tradeoff theory,and economic growth theory,this dissertation focuses on the mechanism and effect of demographic dividends and population transition on our country's economic growth,and further makes a reasonable forecast of our country's demographic transition and analyzed its impact on long-term economic growth based on the forecast data.The research in this dissertation has important theoretical value and practical significance for promoting the long-term balanced development of our country's population,developing demographic quantity dividend and quality dividend,and realizing high-quality economic development.The research content of this dissertation consists of six parts.The first part contains the Chapter 1,narrating the research background and significance of the dissertation,literature review,research framework and methods,and innovations and deficiencies.The second part is the theoretical basis,which mainly contains the Chapter 2.This part explains the basic concepts of population structure,demographic dividend and demographic transition,and combs the demographic transition theory,quantity–quality tradeoff theory,and economic growth theory.The third part is the analysis of typical facts.It mainly includes the Chapter 3 of this dissertation.It mainly describes the demographic transition trends and the phased characteristics of economic growth in the world's major countries,as well as the evolution of our country's population policy and demographic transition trends.The fourth part is the theoretical analysis,including the Chapters 4 to 6.This part constructs a theoretical model of the influence of the demographic quantity dividend and the demographic quality dividend on economic growth,and explains the theoretical mechanism of the two to promote economic growth,then based on the perspective of endogenous fertility and human capital,it analyzes the population under the background of liberalization of fertility policies,and the impact of dividends on economic growth.The fifth part is the empirical test,including Chapter 7 and Chapter8.Chapter 7constructs a demographic dividend and regional economic growth model,using the sixth and seventh national census data and the data of 31 provinces in our country from 2004 to 2019 as the benchmark regression samples to empirically test the demographic dividend and economic growth.And also test the quantitative relationship between growth and the analysis of the temporal and spatial differences between the demographic dividend and economic development.Chapter 8empirically tests the quantity–quality tradeoff theory based on the 1% population sampling survey data in 2005,and then analyzes the future development trend of China's population based on the UN's population fertility rate program,and then constructs an economic growth model that includes the age structure of the population.Analyzed the demographic economic effects of China's fertility rate transition.The sixth part is Chapter 9,which introduces the main conclusions,policy recommendations and future research directions of this dissertation.Based on the theoretical analysis and empirical research,this dissertation draws the following main conclusions:First,the analysis results of the Mankiw,Romer and Weil(MRW)model introducing the age structure of the population show that the demographic dividend can promote economic growth,and economic growth will decline after the demographic dividend disappears;but the demographic quality dividend is sustainable,and the driving force of economic growth will eventually require demographic quality dividend promotion.This dissertation constructs a simple semiendogenous growth model,as long as it assumes that knowledge is non-rival,has the characteristics of increasing returns to scale,and the larger the population,more new knowledge will be created and more output will be produced.Based on an extended MRW model that includes the age structure of the population,the demographic dividend can promote economic growth.Because the age structure of the population is lighter,the burden on the labor force is smaller,so more resources can be used for savings and investment,thereby promoting economic growth.But when the demographic dividend disappears,this part of the labor force will become the elderly,the population aging will intensify,the economy will face a greater burden,and economic growth will decline.Based on the theoretical research of the extended MRW model including the demographic quality dividend,the demographic quality dividend determines an economic development model,which is conducive to the realization of innovative economic development.Second,the study of the expanded model after the liberalization of fertility policy shows that the fertility rate decreases and the demographic dividend gradually disappears,which is not conducive to economic growth.The more the demographic quality,the faster the economic growth.However,if the population decreases too fast,it will endanger the creation of new knowledge,the total amount of knowledge of the whole society will decrease,and the economic growth will decline.In the long run,to achieve sustained economic growth,we should not only improve the level of human capital,but also ensure that the population does not shrink and the fertility rate remains at the level of generation replacement.In the theoretical analysis,this dissertation constructs a general equilibrium theoretical model including endogenous fertility rate and endogenous human capital,reasonably assigns the parameters based on China's actual data,and numerically simulates the relationship between demographic quantity,demographic quality and economic growth.It is found that child rearing cost and child utility are the most direct factors affecting fertility rate,The cost of raising children is negatively correlated with the number of populations,and the utility of children is positively correlated with the number of populations.The more the number of populations,the more knowledge will be created,which is conducive to economic growth.The intensification of population aging will directly increase the population dependency ratio and drag down economic growth.The higher the human capital,the more knowledge will be created and the faster the economic growth will be.Third,the empirical analysis results show that the demographic dividend can promote economic growth,but the demographic quantity dividend has decreased significantly,while the contribution of the demographic quality dividend to economic growth is increasing,and the impact of the demographic dividend on economic growth has regional heterogeneity.Based on the cross-sectional data of prefecture level cities in 2010 and 2020 and the panel data of 31 provinces in China from 2004 to 2019,it is found that the impact of China's demographic quantity dividend on the economy is decreasing,and the impact of demographic quality dividend on the economy is increasing.Further,according to the geographical location,the samples are divided into east,middle,west and northeast,coastal and inland,municipalities directly under the central government and non-municipalities directly under the central government,respectively to verify the heterogeneous impact of demographic dividend on regional economic growth.From the perspective of demographic dividend,the role of demographic dividend on economic growth in the east and northeast has disappeared,but the central and western regions still enjoy the dividend brought by population.From the coastal and inland areas,the impact of demographic dividend on economic growth in coastal areas is not significant,indicating that the demographic dividend in coastal areas has gradually disappeared;For the comparison between municipalities directly under the central government and non-municipalities directly under the central government,the demographic dividend of municipalities directly under the central government has gradually disappeared.From the perspective of demographic quality dividend,demographic quality dividend is still one of the driving forces of regional economic growth,and its impact on regional economic growth is significantly positive at the level of 1%.This shows that with the continuous disappearance of the demographic dividend,all regions should focus on promoting the accumulation of human capital and driving the sustainable economic development through the demographic dividend.Fourth,by predicting the impact of demographic transition on China's future economic growth,the analysis results show that in order to promote sustained economic growth,China's total human capital needs to shift from quantitative accumulation to quality accumulation in the future,that is,to improve per capita human capital.Based on the data of 1% population sampling survey in 2005,this dissertation verifies the micro mechanism of China's demographic transition,that is,the quantity–quality tradeoff theory.Then,according to the United Nations Population Fertility program,this dissertation analyzes the future population development trend of China,constructs an economic growth model including population age structure,and analyzes the population economic effect of China's fertility transition.The study found that with the passage of time,the decline of population growth rate makes the number of resources per capita rise.In addition,the decline of fertility makes the allocation of resources shift from the number of children to the quality of children,which will strengthen the formation of human capital and the improvement of labor productivity.At the same time,with the continuous decline of China's labor force population,the dependency ratio will continue to rise after 2040,and even become a burden on China's future economic growth.With the continuous decline of China's labor force,the contribution of the increase of dependency ratio to the economy will decline rapidly after 2040.The continuous increase of dependency ratio will become the burden of China's future economic growth.Therefore,it is very important to formulate balanced and sustainable policies on population structure and total population.Compared with the existing literature,the innovations of this dissertation are mainly reflected in the following three aspects:Firstly,in the theoretical analysis,this dissertation studies the impact of demographic dividend on economic growth from the extended MRW model of exogenous population and the endogenous growth model of endogenous population.The marginal contribution lies in: In the extended MRW model including population age structure,the human capital factor is added to analyze the impact of demographic quantity dividend and its disappearance on economic growth.In the model including endogenous fertility rate and endogenous human capital,considering the population age structure and quantity–quality tradeoff,and based on China's actual data,the parameters are reasonably assigned to study the relationship between demographic quantity dividend,demographic quality dividend and economic growth,which enriches the theoretical research on demographic quantity and economic growth,It also provides a novel theoretical perspective for understanding China's demographic transition and economic growth.Secondly,this dissertation not only empirically tests the quantitative relationship between demographic dividend and economic growth by using prefecture level city section data and provincial panel data,but also analyzes the temporal and spatial differences between demographic dividend and economic growth by using the data of two censuses in 2010 and 2020,and studies the relationship between demographic dividend and regional economic growth from multiple angles.The empirical results show that the demographic dividend has a significant positive effect on economic growth,in which the impact of demographic quantity dividend on economic growth is decreasing,and the impact of demographic quality dividend on economic growth is increasing.At the same time,this dissertation also finds that the impact of demographic dividend on regional economy is heterogeneous.From the empirical results,we can see that the effect of demographic quantity dividend on economic growth in the eastern and northeastern regions,coastal areas and municipalities directly under the central government has disappeared,but demographic quality dividend is still one of the driving forces driving regional economic growth.Thirdly,this dissertation tests the micro mechanism of China's demographic transition according to the population sampling survey data,then analyzes the future population development trend of China based on the United Nations Population Fertility program,then constructs an economic growth model including fertility and population age structure,and adds the quantity–quality tradeoff mechanism to the model,This dissertation analyzes the long-term impact of fertility changes on China's economic growth in the future.This can not only analyze the impact of fertility change on China's future population development,but also analyze the population economic effects brought by fertility change,and provide relevant countermeasures and suggestions for China's future implementation of population balanced development strategy.