A Study Of The Impact Of Public Human Capital Expenditure On Economic Growth In The Context Of Population Aging

At present,China has become the country with the largest elderly population in the world and one of the countries with the fastest populationaging.However,different from developed countries,China's population aging is "geting old before getting rich".This brings many challenges to China's social and economic development.Therefore,how to effectively solve various social and economic problems which brought about by the populationaging and to maintain steady economic growth at the same time has become a key issue to be solved urgently in China's reform and development.According to the theory of endogenous economic growth and the historical experience of developed countries,human capital will play an important role in China's future economic growth and structural transformation.As the main component of human capital investment,the importance of public human capital expenditure to economic growth is self-evident.On the one hand,public human capital investment is conducive to meeting the rapidly increasing public health needs in an aging society and improving citizens' health.However,it will also extend life expectancy.It leads to further deepening of populationaging and affecting economic growth.On the other hand,investment in public education will help improve the overall educational level of citizens,promote the progress of social labor productivityand bring about sustained economic growth effect.This paper studies the relationship among population aging,public human capital investment and the economic growth in China from both theoretical and empirical aspects.Firstly,based on the extended overlapping generations model,this paper discusses the impact of population aging on economic growth and the corresponding fiscal policies.The theoretical model analysis shows that the relationship between population aging and economic growth is inverted U-shaped.When aging promotes economic growth,the government should increase the proportion of public human capital expenditures while increasing the proportion of public health expenditures.In the opposite,the government needs to reduce public human capital expenditures and increase the proportion of public education expenditures.Secondly,the empirical analysis based on provincial panel data shows that the impact of China's population aging on economic growth is on the left side of the inverted U-shaped.It means that the aging of the population is conducive to economic growth.This effect is mainly achieved by increasing the scale of public education expenditure and public health expenditure.However,at different stages of aging,the effect of public education expenditure and public health expenditure is different.Finally,the paper puts forward relevant policy recommendations.First of all,the scale of public education expenditure and public health expenditure should be increased as a whole.Then,with the deepening of population aging,the public human capital expenditure structure should be appropriately adjusted to increase the proportion of public health expenditure.Lastly,the efficiency of public human capital expenditure should be improved.