Complementary Or Crowding-out Effect?the Re-employment Of Older Workers And Employment Of The Young

Since the reform and opening,the demographic dividend has been an important factor for the sustained and rapid growth of China’s economy.However,the rapid aging of the population in recent years has posed a serious challenge to China’s economic and social development.One of the most important challenges is the labor supply.The number and proportion of working age population declined year after year in China,and the dependency rate of endowment insurance increased at the same time.From the worldwide perspective,China is a low retirement age country,compared with the life expectancy;China’s current retirement age policy resulted in a large-scale waste of human resources,which makes an enormous pressure on pension insurance and health insurance system.In such context,re-employment has become the urgent hope of the elderly groups.In this regard,the party’s 18th Plenary Session proposed to study the progressive delay in retirement age policy,and which is expected that formally began to implement in 2022.However,there is still a big controversy over the issue of re-employment for the elderly,and one of the major concerns is whether the re-employment of older workers will have a crowding-out effect the employment of the young.Reviewing the existing research results,we found that most of the existing research lacks empirical data support,a few quantitative researches mainly based on the time series data of one developed country or the panel data of OECD(Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development)countries,lacking of research based on China.A small amount of Chinese-based research,has not yet further analysis of industry,region,gender and other factors on the relationship between the re-employment of older people and the employment of the young.Therefore,this paper used the population and employment data of 19 industries in China from 2004 to 2014,the population census data of each province in 1990,2000,2010 and the 1%population sampling data of each province in 2005,to analyze the relationship between the re-employment of older people and the employment of the young,and further explored the influence of industry ownership,the regional industry transformation upgrading index and gender in this relationship.Both the industry and regional analyzes showed that the re-employment of older people had significant complementary effect on the employment of the young.In addition,the analysis of the industry level showed that the ownership characteristics of industry have a significant negative effect on the relationship between the two,that is,the higher the proportion of employees in the state-owned units,the weaker the"complementary" effect on the employment of the young.The results of the regional analysis showed that the regional industry transformation upgrading index also has significant positive adjustment effect in the relationship between the two,that is,the higher the degree of transition from the primary industry to the second and the third industry,the stronger the "complementary" effect on the employment of the young.Finally,the results of the gender analysis at the industry level and the regional level further show that the re-employment of older men had significant complementary effect on the employment of young men and women.However,the re-employment of older women had significant crowding-out effect on those,and the crowding-out effect generated by 55-64 year-old women is far stronger than the 55-64 year-old ones.Finally,the paper proposed some policy suggestions according to the results of empirical analysis.Including encouraging young people to change their employment concepts,optimize career development education,and guide them to participate in traditional and non-state units.Optimize the regional industrial structure,formulate policies to encourage the development of new industries,accelerate the transformation and upgrading of industrial in central and western regions.Implementing gender differences retirement age system or flexible retirement system,taking account of the elderly workers family roles and physical condition,allowing them to decide their retirement age within a certain range.Formulate reasonable policy to protect older employees,clarify the exclusive government departments responsible for the elderly employment problem,guaranteeing the re-employment rights of the elderly.