Research On The Urbanization Under The Background Of Aging Population

As a special resource, demographic dividend has pushed on Chinese economic growth in past30years. But the tendency of aging population is more and more serious and the proportion of Chinese work force has turned to decrease. The shortage of labor and increasing salary of laborer shows that Chinese demographic dividend has turned to the tendency of attenuation. There is a research indicates that the demographic dividend attenuation will bring1.5to2percentage resistance per year to Chinese economic growth. In this, how to response this resistance is a big challenge for China. And from the demographic shifts and economic development in China over the past more than30years, we know that Chinese sufficient and cheap labor supply is not only from the lower dependency ratios of population age structures but also from the surplus rural labour. In planned economic system, the household registration system constrains a lot of rural labour. As the reform and opening up, rural labour pours into city under the conditions of labour free movement which provides abundant and cheap labor to manufacturers and promotes economic growth. Therefore, the demographic dividend of China derives from two aspects.Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the2001Nobel Prize in economics, once ranked China’s urbanization alongside America’s high-technology as one of the two most important issues which will influence human development in the21st century. In the past three decades, China has fulfilled Stiglitz’s prophecy with its rapid economic development as well as its high-speed urbanization. From1978to2013, the number of permanent residents in towns and cities increased from170,000,000to730,000,000. The urbanization rate increased from17.9%to53.7%with an annual increase of1.02%. China’s rapid urbanization has absorbed a large amount of transferred rural labor and increased the efficiency of allocation of factors of production in both urban and rural areas. It has promoted continuous and rapid development of the national economy, profound changes of social structure as well as all-around improvement of urban and rural living standards. Besides, China’s household registration system and land system has forged its unique situation of urbanization which is different from that of other countries’. In the mean time, demographic structure in urban and rural areas has changed greatly. In consideration of the special circumstances of China’s demographic dividend and urbanization progress, the paper discusses whether urbanization, the important engine of China’s economic development, can wield positive influence in reducing negative consequences of decreasing demographic dividend.Under the background of Chinese aging population, this paper will research Chinese urbanization from the aspect of how to cope with the negative effect bringing by demographic dividend attenuation. To research the speed of urbanization, basing on Romer’s "growth drag" model and the Chinese special population structure between urban and rural areas, this article builds the alternative model of urban and rural population migration and population dividend under steady growth constraints, and has an empirical analysis of urban and rural population migration velocity which aims to deal with demographic dividend attenuation by national statistics. To research the urbanization pattern, basing on the present situation of urbanization, this article further the analyses and aims to get an urbanization path which can deal with the influence of demographic dividend attenuation. Comprehensively considering the empirical results of the article, the general law of urbanization and the present situation of urbanization in our country, this article argues that only from the level of quantity (or by a more rapid urbanization speed), we cannot achieve steady economic growth under the background of aging society. Urbanization must be entered a new stage of transformative development in order to give priority to improve the quality. In other words, to resolve negative impact of economic growth caused by demographic dividend attenuation, accelerating the new type of urbanization is the important measures. This conclusion also overturns the assumption what we assume at the beginning. That is in the context of demographic dividend attenuation improving the urbanization speed can maintain steady economic growth. In other words, if the case of other conditions remain unchanged, as the trend of demographic dividend attenuation downward trend of China’s economy will be inevitable.