Population Factors In Economic Growth And The Change Of Their Roles

There has been a great controversy on the problem of the relationship between population and economic growth for a long time. This paper tries to discuss this relationship starting with the size and structure of population.This paper is an extended analysis based on Romer’s endogenous growth model by introducing the factor of population. Thus, we find that there should be some degree of a linear relationship between the rate of economic growth and population size. Besides, this kind of relationship can be proved by demonstration proof-tests from the long-term perspective. Through the reflection on the above model, we find that structures of age and knowledge are also key variables. By affect the labor supply and action of consumption and saving, the age structure has an influence on economy; in the same time, the knowledge structure achieve this by affect the quality of labor, the technology and support industrial structure. In empirical analysis, we discuss the impact of demographic factors on the economy and trend of this impact, based on Chinese data from 2001 to 2011. We find that both population size and demographic structure have a significant contribution on Chinese economic growth, but this contribution tends to decrease, while the contribution of knowledge structure increases. According to this, we know that the demographic dividend has played an important role in economy growth, but this contribution is weakening, and the change from demographic dividend to human capital is a appropriate choice for China. On the one hand, we should create human capital dividend actively by investment in education; on the other hand, we should focus on the transformation of economic growth mode, adjusting the industrial structure, and then promote the full utilization of human capital dividend.