A Study Of Demographic Dividend Based On Provincial Panel Data In China

The economy of China has boomed in the past thirty years, which accorded with the change of population age structure. This accordance made scholars pay attention to the phenomenon of demographic dividend, which means the increase of working-age adults share in the population is in favor of the rise in output per capita during a particular stage of demographic transition. After experiencing several years of rapid growth, China is facing the dilemma of a slowdown and a inflection point of population age structure. Consequently, studying the relationship of economic growth and demographic dividend is important, which can help us to understand the relation between population and economic growth, as well as to adjust politics duly to boost the economy.This article aims at analysing the mechanism of demographic dividend on economic growth based on the relation between population and economic growth. Weighted least square method is used in the paper to regress the provincial panel data from 1990-2010 with working-age adults share in the population as the metric measuring the contribution of demographic dividend to economic growth. Empirical analysis shows that the rise of working-age adults share has positive impact on economic growth, and it also can explain part of the growth of economy during the discussed period. The greatest contribution of demographic dividend occurred in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region reaching 28.11%, and most of the rest area was above 15%.As demographic dividend is a unique opportunity during the development of society and economy, this advantage brought by demographic transition would finally vanish, followed by the rise of elderly population share. At present working-age adults share has begun to decrease, and the absolute number of working-age adults is going down. Consequently, it is quite necessary to take measures to reduce the negative influence of the change of population age structure on economic growth.This article has a certain degree of innovation, but it contains inadequacy at the same time. Firstly, the statistical caliber of data lacks consistency. Secondly, the endophytism of explanatory variables is out of consideration. Endophytism is a inevitable question when we do research on economic growth, and this inadequacy will be resolved by scholars in the future.