The Study On The Impact Of China’s Population Aging On Residents’ Consumption

The fifth census data show that China has entered the aging society since1999. Unlike in developed countries, however, China is still in the period of economic transformation when it entered the aging society."Old before getting rich" is its main characteristic. The sixth census data show that china’s aging process gradually accelerates, people aged65and above account for8.87%of China’s population,1.91%higher than the2000census. However, as an important promotion of economy growth, the consumption has always been inadequate, as well as the increasing aging population.In the context of aging, on the basis of life cycle hypothesis, this paper analyses the influence of population aging on the consumption in China by putting young dependency ratio and old dependency ratio into the consumer model as well as using of the inter provincial panel data. And then according to the empirical analysis, we make suggestions to improve the levels of domestic consumption from the perspective of population ageing.The basic structure of this paper consists of the following five parts:Chapter one is introduction. This section mainly includes the research background, significance, and the related concepts of aging and aging society, and then proposes the methods and the framework, as well as the innovations and insufficiencies in this paper.Chapter two is the theoretical analysis and literature review, including the following the two aspects. Firstly, this part introduces the theory and channels of aging influence consumption; secondly, the research and review of the related research about the relationship between aging and consumption at home and aboard, and then determine the contents and methods of this research.Chapter three mainly includes the current situation of aging population, as well as residents’ consumption demand. Firstly, the cause and the characteristics of China’s aging population, as well as the future trend; and then introductions of the residents’ consumption in China. Chapter four is the empirical study on the relationship between aging of the population and consumption. Firstly, based on the latest research results at home and abroad, this paper constructs the consumption function model including variables of the age structure of population, and then by using the provincial panel data, as well as econometric software Eviews6.0, the paper empirically analyzes the impact of population aging on the residents’consumption, from the levels of the national, sub regional, regional, urban and rural, respectively. Conclusions of the study are as follows:the empirical analysis of panel data shows that the residents’ consumption rate was positively correlated with the youth dependency rate, but negatively correlated with the old dependency rate, and the effect of the old dependency rate is more evident than the effect of the youth dependency rate; the change of dependency rate among different regions has different influence on residents’ consumption rate; empirical analysis of urban and rural areas shows that, the residents’ consumption rate was negatively correlated with the old dependency rate, but in town, this impact is not significant, however, the residents’ consumption rate was negatively and positively correlated with the youth dependency rate in urban and rural area, respectively.Chapter five mainly includes the main conclusions and policy advice. According to empirical research results from the fourth chapter, this part summary comprehensively the impact of population ageing on residents’ consumption in China, and gives appropriate policy advice.Studying on the impact of aging population on residents’ consumption demand, can help us analyze the reasons of the inadequate consumer demand from a demographic perspective, and is of great significance to start the sluggish consumer market. This study can also be used as the reference to the policy of the future development of China’s economy and population policy, especially for the elderly population policy, and also has certain guiding significance to China’s economic restructuring and sustainable economic growth.This article conducts a detailed study about China’s aging population and residents’ consumption, and makes the following innovations on the basis of the existing literature:The first is that compared to most literature only from the national level to explain the relationship between aging and residents’ consumption, this paper has certain innovation by using panel data to make empirical analysis, from the levels of the provincial, regional, urban and rural.The second is that this paper conducts regression by using panel data; which can control the individual effect, reduce the multicollinearity, which has certain innovation in research methods.This article finishes with the study on the effects of aging population on residents’ consumption. However, due to the research capability, there are inevitably some insufficiencies, which need to be further studied. The insufficiencies of the paper are as follows:Firstly, because of the difficulty of collecting data, the empirical analysis in this paper does not use the micro survey data, so it is difficult to distinguish consumers’ behavior among different consumers, unable to the give corresponding policy advice at the micro level; secondly, the paper only studies the impact of aging population by using the panel data, fails to study the impact of ageing population on residents’ consumption structure, this is the direction for further study.