The Study On Population Structure And Regional Innovation Ability

A large number of professional researches have shown technological innovation plays an important role in promoting regional economic development, so that factors that can influence technological innovation ability are also well studied. This paper mainly from the perspective of the population structure, discussed its impact on technological innovation of different areas. For understanding the change of our country’s population structure and technological innovation well, the paper gives a summary research based on the date firstly. Then in the empirical research, the article used panel data of 30 major provinces from 1999 to 2008 decade and the variables reflecting population structure included the rate of old age, the rate of urbanization, new birth rate, the population every square kilometers and the population rate working in second and third industry. The control variables included per capita disposable income, the input into research and development activities in different regions, the number of graduates, FDI and the rate of local funding accounting for science and technology. Representing the technological innovation ability, we use the number of patent applications for inventions lag three years as the dependent variable. And then the fixed effect model was used for the independent variables regression.The results show that during the research period, the rate of old age doesn’t present significant. In the model 1 which does not include control variables and the population rate working on the second industry presents the population structure, the rate of urbanization do not present significant, the coefficient of new birth rate is negative, the coefficient presents population density and industry structure is significant positive. In the contrast model 2, the rate of urbanization is significant at 5% level and the population rate working on the third industry loses the impact on the innovation. However, after putting the control variables into the model, the rate of new birth and old age lost the signification, the urbanization and population density will promote the improvement of innovation, the coefficient of population rate working on third industry is negative significantly. The outcome of regression also shows R&D spend, the number of graduates and the local government’s financial support for innovation will significantly promote technological innovation. There also were disagreements on the function of FDI on the technological innovation ability. In the model the elasticity coefficient of Infdi was negative. However, after putting lnfdi2 into the new model, the coefficient was significant positive. The research conclusion showed the role FDI played in technological innovation presented "U" shaped curve. That means with the increasing amount of FDI, the variable was negative and then become positive.In addition, taking into account the differences of development level in different regions of our country, we divided the country into eastern, central and western regions and three models were established for the analysis. In the eastern region, the result shows FDI, the rate of new birth and old age no longer has a significant influence on innovation, at the same time it also tells developing the third industry can promote the innovation. In the central region, FDI has an inhibited effect and old-aging has a promoting effect on technological innovation. Per capita disposable income and industrial population structure at this time lose a significant impact. The fact rate of urbanization and population density lost signification means improving the regional innovation ability doesn’t only mean change population status and expanding the population size. Finally, in the western region, the marginal outcome of R&D spend is more than the eastern region. FDI still has an inhibited effect. However the elasticity coefficient is lower than the same in the central region model. At last, studying the effect of industrial population structure on innovation, opposite the conclusion in the eastern region model, population rate working on the third industry has a negative significant correlation with innovation. It means west region needs further efforts on developing the second industry in the future.At last, based on the existing analysis, we come up with some referential suggestions for government to improve the local technological innovation ability, including the right action to an old aging society arrival, improving the quality of urbanization, adjusting the proportion of the working population in different industries and getting better R&D system and so on.