Research On The Impact Of Population Aging On Consumption

The problem of population aging is becoming a focus to government departments and economists since we have entered aging society in1999. This issue has gradually become a principal element that influences the sustainable development of economy. With the aging of the population deepens, the growth rate of domestic consuming demand is less than satisfactory. Compared with foreign developed countries and some developing countries, the domestic household consumption demand plays a lower role in economic growth as well as final consuming rate. In the context of China’s aging problem, the thesis analyses the influence of population aging on the consumption in the twelve eastern provinces by using of related data of these provinces as well as the research models of aging issue and consuming demand made by foreign and domestic scholars. It could be divided into six parts:Chapter one is the theoretical basis of the paper, including the following four aspects. Firstly, the research background, significance, research contents and the theoretical foundation of this thesis are introduced. Secondly, international and domestic research situations on aging problems are reviewed and summarized, especially the description of the study on aging and economy, aging and savings, as well as aging and consumption. Thirdly, the main research framework and research methods are listed, the research emphases of the paper are induced, and the research frame diagram is made. Fourthly, the innovative points and the research value of this thesis are described.Chapter two mainly introduces the current situation of domestic consumption demand, the background of population aging and its status, as well as the problems existing in the consumer market of old people. The domestic situation of final consumption and the present situation of the role of consumption on economic development are introduced in the part of the domestic consuming demand. The existing circumstances of China’s aging problem and its future trends are analyzed in the part of the status of population aging. Besides this, a comparison of domestic situation and international status are made in order to highlight the severity of China’s aging problem.Chapter three mainly describes the influencing mechanism of population aging to consuming demand. The acting mechanism is divided into two parts:the direct acting mechanism and the indirect acting mechanism. The former mainly exists in the influence of population aging on consumer market of old people; the latte describes the indirect effect of aging problem on consumption demand by studying its influence on savings, labor supply, labor productivity, and economic growth; the paper not only emphatically analyses the problems existing in the consumer market of the old people, but also analyses its influences on the improvement of consumption demand level. Moreover, the government function of the population aging on consuming demanding is analyzed. This chapter is a theoretical foundation for the empirical study in the next chapter. The positive and negative effects analysis of aging on consumer demand mainly talks about the primary results of the aging, so it makes the theoretical hypothesis for empirical study as bellow.Chapter four is the research focus of the paper. On the basis of the former chapter as well as some domestic and international models of empirical analyses, the base models and extended models are constructed by the author of this thesis. In the researching process of base models, we find that the estimating parameters of models are not significant if the dependency of children and senior people are regarded as independent variables. Therefore, with the improvement of age variables, we find that the ratio of the dependency of senior people to children could be adopted to describe the age conditions. Apart from this, we also find that the ratio of the dependency of senior people to children play a negative role in consumption. Meanwhile, extended models are constructed and related parameters are estimated by introducing variables such as price, income ratio and financial expenditure ratio.Chapter five discusses the conclusion. The impact of Real per capita income of urban households on consumption were greater than estimated parameter per capita net income of rural households; The total effect of population aging on consumer demand is negative; The total effect of government expenditure on consumer demand is negative; Elderly dependency ratio have a negative impact on the consumer demand, Child dependency ratio have a positive impact on consumer demand.The dissertation finds that population aging have played a negative role in consumption demand on the basis of theoretical analyses as well as empirical analyses. This kind of negative influence will rise gradually with the development of population aging. It will decline when reaching to a certain point. The aging problem of our country is still in the initial stage of "the inverted U-shaped relationship between population aging and consumption demand", the related negative influence is not serious and the empirical results of macroscopic data are not sufficient to reflect the tiny effects of population aging. However, with the coming of domestic aging climax in2050, its negative influence will increase gradually, which might seriously constrain the sustainable development of our economy. Therefore, we should pay more attention to population aging.