| Since the beginning of the reform and opening in 1978, China’s economy has developed at high speed, which is called “China’s economic growth miracle” by western countries. Along with the process, as one of the “troika” of a nation’s economy, export has been playing an extremely important role for a long time. From 1994 to 2013, China’s current account has been surplus consistently for 20 years, especially since the accession to WTO, the trade surplus has grown rapidly. For the cause of the persistent current account surplus in China, the main tone in the world is the theory of currency manipulation that Chinese government manipulates its currency. But the trade deficit in United States for 20 years and the current account surplus in Japan for 22 years indicate that the evolution of current account has been sustained by some decisive factors for a long time, and this paper attempts to explain the reason why China’s current account is consistently surplus from the perspective of demographic changes.This paper constructs a current account model on the basis of individual saving model and social saving model, and proposes three hypotheses about the impacts of demographic changes on current account. Then we conduct empirical tests with provincial panel data of China from 1989 to 2012, and the empirical results are as follows: ①The estimated results of system GMM revealed that: child dependency ratio has a significant negative effect on current account; while based on China’s special conditions, elderly dependency ratio doesn’t have a significant impact on current account; Sex ratio introduced by this paper breakthroughly has a significant positive effect on current account. ②By measuring,demographic changes account for a quarter of the changes of China’s current account, proving that demographic changes in China is an important reason why current account is always surplus. ③Endogenous further search is more certain that demographic changes affect the current account in four dynamic stages: The negative impact of child dependency ratio on current account enhances with the increase of economic development level, while with the increase of economic development level, the positive impact of sex ratio on current account is shown as an “inverted U”. ④The empirical results of the influence mechanism of demographic changes on the current account show that: child dependency ratio has a significant negative effect on saving rate, while its negative effect on the investment rate is not significant, and the two kinds of effect give rise to the significant negative effect of child dependency ratio on current account together; elderly dependency ratio has a significant positive impact on the saving rate, and it also has a relatively significant positive impact on investment rate, and the two kinds of impact contribute that its impact on the current account is not significant; sex ratio has a significant positive impact on the saving rate,while it has a significant negative impact on investment rate, and the two kinds of impact lead to its significant positive effect on the current account together.Based on the above research, to achieve a balanced development of the current account, we propose the following policy recommendations from the perspective of demographic changes: Firstly, adjusting the family planning policy properly, and gradually liberalizing the two-child policy, which could not merely solve the “low birth rate” problem but also help to achieve the balance of current account; Secondly, accelerating the improvement of the system of social security system, vigorously promoting the construction of old-age security system, and gradually releasing the purchasing power of the elderly population; Thirdly, further improving laws and regulations, it is strictly prohibited to identify the gender of a fetus without medical needs, and promoting the population gender balance; Last but not the least, further strengthening the supervision of the real estate market, and adjusting the relationship between supply and demand, effectively controlling the artificially high prices of property, which is beneficial to release the “competitive savings” of male and to promote the balance of current account. |
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