Research On The Effects Of Population Aging To Consumption Structure In Hunan Province

Population aging is a process that the population of the elderly relative increase and the teenage population and labor population relative reduction in the society, which reflects the trend of the population age structure. The increasing number of elderly population in a country or a region, will changes the mainstream social consumer groups, so the residents’ consumption structure will be affect. China, as the largest developing country in the world, entered the aging society in 2000.The different degree of the aging of population of urban and rural residents in China, while the existence of urban-rural dual economic structure, cause that urban and rural population aging have different levels influence on urban and rural residents’ consumption structure. Hunan Province, as one of the major agricultural province in central China, entered the aging society as early as in 1998, 2 years earlier than the national. The end of 2013, the number of the population aged 65 and above up to 708.4 million, and the population aging coefficient has reached 10.59%, higher than the national average of 0.93 percentage points. From 2000 to now, Hunan’s population aging coefficient have ranked the top ten, and higher than the national average, rural residents’ population aging coefficient are higher than urban residents, and consumption expenditure of urban and rural residents have a tremendous difference, also have different influence on the consumption structure of urban and rural residents. Therefore, under the background of the different urban and rural population aging, this article discuss the effects of population aging on consumption structure divided urban and rural, and propose countermeasures and suggestions to promote the rationalization of consumption structure, which can effectively promote the sustained and rapid economic development of urban and rural, and solve the problem of China’s consumer demand insufficient.On the basis of existing research results at home and abroad for reference, this paper discusses the impact of population aging on Hunan Province consumption structure from both theoretical and empirical. First of all, this paper elaborate the concept of the population aging and consumption structure, and point out that this paper adopts the standard of population aging and the classification of the consumption structure. Secondly, this paper introduces the urban and rural residents of Hunan province present situation and characteristics of an ageing population and consumption structure, and this paper expounds the influence mechanism of the population aging to the consumption structure. After, using the gray relational analysis(GRA), this paper using the urban and rural residents’ data from 2000 to 2013 do empirical research, conclude the population aging and the eight categories of consumer spending’ correlation degree of the urban and rural residents. The empirical results show that the urban population aging influence consumption structure in the top three are: medical and health expenses(0.7387), food expenses(0.7276), transportation and communication expenses(0.7076). Rural population aging effect on the consumption structure in the top three are: medical and health expenses(0.8769), education and culture and entertainment expenses(0.7898), clothing expenses(0.7592). Finally, according to the results of theoretical analysis and empirical analysis, this paper put forward the corresponding countermeasures and Suggestions.