| Population aging is a global problem. In2000, the Chinese proportion of the population over60years reached7%, which indicates that China has entered the aging society. By2012, the Chinese proportion of the population over60years reached14.3%, which indicates that China has entered the rapid aging stage. However, at present, China is still in the initial stage of socialism, still belongs to middle-income countries. In such background, our aging phenomenon reflects the unique characteristics of the primary stage of socialism:aging before getting rich, larger, faster, heavier support burden, significant dual structure. We faced with the enormous challenge of aging crisis.Thanks to the reform and opening, China’s economy grew at an average growth rate of10%, but most of the growth is driven by the import, export and investment, the consumption——one of the status of "three carriage" has been in the doldrums.In2012, consumption-driven is only4.2percent for China’s GDP, which indicates our consumption has not been well developed. Additionally, in2012,the rate of household consumption in China is only35%, not only lower than developed countries such as USA(69%), Japan(61%) and South Korea(54%), also below the world average(60).Furthermore, the Chinese household consumption rate is also lower than the level of the developing countries such as India(60%).Population aging is intertwined with the economic development and the social transition, and now it has attracted international attention. In this background, the analysis of the influence of population aging on China’s household consumption is of great theoretical and practical significance. In theory, the research provides us new ideas to explain the reasons for low consumption, help us to further improve and develop consumption theory; the research of population aging on the consumption is an international issue, study the impact of population aging on consumption, to achieve substantive research results will help us to improve the academic international status, will help us to enhance international competitiveness. In practice, the research contributes to understanding the consumption characteristics of the old, further activating the "silver market", promoting China’s consumption structure upgrading; analyzing the influence of the population aging on our consumption also provides a reference to improve the Social security policy.This paper describes that China faced the severe situation of aging before getting rich, analyzes the negative correlation of population aging and the household consumption, and researches the impact of population aging on China’s household consumption structure. Specifically, taking the household consumption as the dependent variable, the old-age dependency ratio as an independent variable concerned, per capita income, GDP growth rate as basic variables, the real interest rate as latent variable, use the time-series data from1978to2012, employing co-integration analysis, establishing the VECM to analyze the macroeconomic effects of population aging on household consumption, conclude that China’s population aging reduces the household consumption rate. On the other hand, consumption goods are classified as food, clothing, housing, household equipment and supplies, transportation, communications, education and entertainment, health care and other eight categories, according to the National Bureau of Standards. Take the eight categories of consumption expenditure proportion as reference sequence, the elderly dependency ratio and the child dependency ratio as reference sequence. Use gray correlation analysis method to study the microcosmic impact of population aging on household consumption structure. Conclude that the population aging has greater impact on education and entertainment, housing, and health care. Most importantly, on the basis of theoretical and empirical analysis, we propose the policy to response to population aging, and make recommendations to increase the household consumption demand. |
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