Impact Of Population Aging On Economic Growth In Japan

Population aging has become a common problem that many countries need to deal with.From the perspective of the current situation and future trend of population aging,developed countries are in the forefront,especially Japan,which has become the country with the most serious population aging in the world.Problems such as insufficient labor supply and aging of labor age structure are also very prominent.But on the whole,Japan has experienced and to a certain extent resolved the impact of population aging on the economy and society.Based on the coordination between aging population and economic development stage in Japan,after the "The First Demographic Dividend" and the high-speed economic development stage,Japan had entered the initial stage of aging society,The Japanese government attaches great importance to the development and utilization of human resources for the elderly,created the "The Second Demographic Dividend" in the process of population aging,and maintain the slow steady growth of the economy.After the"The Second Demographic Dividend" disappeared and the economy entered the stage of"long-term stagnation",ICT technology was gradually applied to the aging society.At present,Japan is striving to build an ICT super-aged "platinum society" to cope with the problems of the shrinking workforce and low social participation of the elderly.China has entered the primary stage of aging population,which is characterized by a large population base and a fast aging rate.With the arrival of the "silver Wave",China will soon enter the"age of longevity".Getting old before getting rich and the system is old before it is ready.All will increase the grim situation of aging population.At the same time,the size of the working-age population began to decline slowly,and the aging trend of the labor force became more obvious.Therefore,to explore and analyze the impact of Japan’s aging population and the resulting of labor force structure changing on economic growth,summarize its experience and lessons,and develop the "The Second Demographic Dividend" will have important enlightenment significance for China to deal with the increasingly severe aging population problem in the future.The possible marginal contribution of this thesis is as follows:first,research perspective innovation.In this thesis,while investigating the impact of population aging on economic growth,it also analyzes the impact of population aging on labor force,and further explores the impact of labor force structure changing on economic growth,following the logic of step-by-step research.It is worth mentioning that the thesis follows the research idea from macro to micro,analyzed the direct influence of regional population aging on economic growth,It also analyzed the economic impact of population aging on labor structure at the industrial level and the economic impact of labor structure at the micro individual level,focusing on the impact of population aging on economic growth from a comprehensive perspective.Second,research content innovation.This thesis conducts a comparative study on the effect of labor force structure changing on economic growth under the effect of population aging.This thesis focuses on the analysis of different stages of economic growth,the degree of aging,whether has differences impact on economic growth,analyzes the impact trend of population aging in the process of economic growth from a more comprehensive perspective.Third,Index selection innovation.When analyzing the role of intelligent technology,this thesis focuses on ICT technology.From the perspective of macro investment and micro skills of ICT,ICT indicators are respectively constructed to analyze how ICT affects economic growth in the context of aging.At the same time,human capital indicators is not only measured by high education level,but also focuses on the comparison of the economic impact of different education levels.In addition,this thesis examines the influence of the interaction item between ICT and high education level,to test whether there is a complementary effect between technology and education.The main research work and conclusions of this thesis are as follows:1.Reviews relevant literature,summarizes relevant theories on the impact of population aging on economic growth,and concludes and deduces the mechanism of the impact of population aging on economic growth.Firstly,literature review.This thesis summarizes the relevant research on the impact of population aging on economic growth from three aspects.One is the study of the relationship between population and economic growth,focusing on the two levels of population scale and population quality.The second is the study of the impact of population structure change on economic growth,including the impact of population aging on economic growth,the impact of labor force structure changing on economic growth and the impact of population structure changing on economic growth under the effect of technology.The third part studies the impact of population aging on economic growth in Japan,focusing on sorting out relevant literature on the impact of population aging on overall economic growth,consumption and savings,investment and import and export.Secondly,summarize the relevant theories.Including:economic development theory represented by Solow Growth Model and The Theory of Endogenous Growth;Life cycle theory is composed of individual life cycle theory and family life cycle theory;Population theory and the theory of technological progress.2.Aging process and economic growth in JapanFirstly,the present situation,characteristics and causes of population aging are summarized and analyzed.This thesis expounds the changes and characteristics of labor force structure under the influence of population aging,including the overall size of labor force and labor force participation rate,the changes of labor force age structure and labor force participation rate,the changes of labor force gender structure and labor force participation rate.The changing characteristics of labor force structure.Secondly,it combs and analyzes the status and stage characteristics of Japan’s post-war economic growth.The process of economic growth is divided by the actual GDP growth,and the phased characteristics of economic growth are analyzed from the perspectives of demand structure change and industrial structure adjustment.Finally,it summarizes and analyzes the influence of population aging on economic growth.The results show that:(1)the aging situation of Japanese population is becoming increasingly severe,and the proportion of elderly population over 65 years old and the dependency ratio of elderly population are both on the rise.The aging rate is too fast and the aging is obvious,the family structure shows various aging,the population aging varies greatly in different regions,and the aging rate in big cities is accelerating.(2)The overall scale of labor force decreases and the structure fluctuates greatly.On the whole,the labor force scale in Japan presents an "M" shaped changing trend,the labor force participation rate is declining,and the labor employment gap between industries is large.Japan’s labor force structure shows an obvious aging trend.The male labor force participation rate is higher than the female labor force participation rate,but the male labor force participation rate is decreasing and the female labor force participation rate is increasing.Among them,the labor force participation rate of female age structure presents an "M" shaped trend,and the "M" shaped curve moderates over time,indicating that the female labor force participation rate keeps rising.(3)Japan’s economic development has experienced post-war economic recovery stage,high-speed economic growth stage,low economic growth stage,economic stagnation stage after the collapse of the bubble economy,the prosperity stage in the new century,and economic fluctuation stage after the financial crisis stage.Throughout the course of economic development,the economic structure has been constantly adjusted.From the perspective of demand structure,consumption,investment and export are the key factors driving Japan’s economic growth.With the continuous development of economy and the aggravation of aging population,Japan gradually faces the dilemma of insufficient domestic demand and weak investment.Comparatively,export plays a good role in economic growth.From the perspective of industrial structure development,the leading industry has gradually transitioned from labor-intensive industry to capital-intensive industry,and then to technology-intensive and service-oriented industry.At present,the"three,two and one" industrial structure mode has been formed.(4)Economic growth and population aging are in synchronous.The adjustment of economic structure and the change of industrial structure reflect the development trend of aging population.3.An empirical study on the impact of population aging on economic growth in JapanFirstly,the hypothesis that population aging has an adverse effect on economic growth from the perspective of supply and demand is proposed through mechanism analysis.Secondly,a verification model based on Solow model is constructed to explore the impact of population aging on economic growth.Based on the final regression model for variable selection and data interpretation.Furthermore,the regression results of the model were obtained by using the fixed effect model and LSDV.Finally,in order to investigate the robustness of the regression results,the core variable population aging is replaced by the dependency ratio of the elderly population.At the same time,endogeneity is discussed by means of instrumental variable method.The results show that:(1)population aging is not conducive to economic growth.Population aging has a negative impact on economic growth through two channels:reduced factor supply and insufficient demand.(2)The technological innovation level has a positive impact on Japan’s economic growth.Both the national policy support and the diversified R&D activities of Japanese enterprises play a positive role in promoting economic growth.(3)The impact of human capital on Japan’s economic growth is positive.The improvement of the overall education level is conducive to the improvement of the quality of labor force,and the ability to accept new knowledge and new skills is relatively strong,thus promoting economic growth.(4)Physical capital stock has a positive impact on Japan’s economic growth,and fixed asset investment will promote economic development with the help of multiplier effect,which is the main force promoting economic growth.(5)From the perspective of other control variables,the impact of government expenditure on economic growth is negative,and the aging of government expenditure is not conducive to injecting new vitality into economic production and social development;The effect of consumption on economic growth is positive and does not pass the significance test,so the effect of consumption on economic growth is uncertain.Industrial structure is conducive to Japan’s economic growth.The transformation and upgrading of Japan’s overall industrial structure and the internal transformation and upgrading of manufacturing industry under the influence of aging are of great significance for promoting economic growth.Net export has a positive impact on economic growth.Japan can import resources and export products from other countries through trade,give full play to its comparative advantage,and then have a positive impact on economic growth.4.An empirical study on the impact of labor structure change on economic growth in JapanFirstly,based on the mechanism analysis,three hypotheses are proposed:The aging of labor force age structure can promote the economic growth of Japan,but in the long run,under the effect of the aging of population,the positive impact will be constantly weakened,which will ultimately be detrimental to economic growth;The improvement of female labor force participation rate can promote economic growth under the influence of population aging;The labor force with higher education level is beneficial to economic growth,but it needs to go through the process of matching with industry and capital,the accumulation of human capital such as labor production knowledge and skill level can improve labor quality and the improvement of labor quality can promote economic growth.Secondly,based on industry-level data and solow model,this paper studies the impact of labor force structure change on economic growth under the influence of population aging.Secondly,based on the theoretical basis to set the econometric model,get the extended Solow model,based on the final regression model for variable selection and data interpretation.Furthermore,the regression results of the model were obtained by using the fixed effect model and LSDV method.Then,in order to examine the robustness of the regression results,the model is transformed and the core explained variable is replaced by labor productivity.At the same time,endogeneity is discussed by means of instrumental variable method.Finally,the extended analysis is carried out.From the micro individual point of view,examine the impact of labor structure on wage level,further explain the relationship between labor structure change and economic growth.The results show that:(1)on the whole,the labor force aged between 30 and 49 and the labor force aged over 50 can promote economic growth.However,from the perspective of development trend,the aggravation of population aging will gradually weaken the positive impact of labor force of the two age groups on economic growth.(2)The impact of different education levels on economic growth.From the perspective of high education level,on the whole,high education level labor force promotes economic growth,while low education level labor force is not conducive to economic growth.And with the improvement of economic development level,the former positive effect is more obvious.(3)The influence of age structure on economic growth under different education levels.The labor force with low education level between 30 and 49 years old is not conducive to economic growth as a whole,mainly because as the main force of working-age labor force,labor force participation is high,and the adverse impact of low education level will be further amplified.There is a matching process between highly educated and skilled labor over 50 and industrial development.With the adjustment of Japan’s industrial structure to production-oriented service industry and technology-intensive industry,the demand for highly educated labor over 50 increases and gradually plays a positive role.The labor force with low education level over 50 years old is conducive to economic growth and has a high integration degree with industrial development in the whole process of economic development.(4)Influence of age structure of labor force and education level on economic growth under ICT.On the whole,the combination of labor force over 50 years old and ICT has a positive impact on economic growth.Among them,the combination of ICT and labor force over 50 years old with low education level has a more obvious positive effect,which can be interpreted as that labor force over 50 years old with low education level can play a positive role in technological imitation.The combination of ICT and highly educated labor force aged between 30 and 49 has a positive impact on economic growth,mainly because this group of labor force has strong learning and innovation ability and can better adapt to the introduction of ICT in the process of industrial development.ICT can mitigate the adverse impact of aging of labor force caused by population aging,but it cannot reverse the overall trend of adverse impact of aging on economic growth.In addition,the empirical model based on Minser equation based on micro-individual data shows that the role of Japanese female labor force will continue to improve,and there is an inverted u-shaped relationship between age and productivity.At the level of human capital,ICT skills have a significant positive effect.ICT skills can play a positive role when combined with 30～49 year old labor force and 50～65 year old labor force.Training can improve the production efficiency of 50～65 year old labor force.Based on the above conclusions,this paper puts forward the following targeted policy recommendations:Firstly,improve the social participation of the elderly population and women,and develop the elderly and female labor resources;Secondly,improve the quality of labor force,promote the accumulation of human capital,strengthen investment in education and vocational training;Thirdly,raise the level of scientific and technological innovation,increase investment in research and development,and promote industrial transformation and upgrading;Fourth,promote "wisdom to help the elderly","wisdom to use the elderly" and "wisdom for the elderly".