The Impact Of Population Aging And Technological Progress On The Upgrading Of Industrial Structure

At present,China's economy has entered a "new normal",the upgrading of industrial structure has become one of the major problems,and it becomes very important to the stable development of the economy.Compared with most developed countries in the world,China's current industrial structure still has some problems.For example,the proportion of the primary and secondary industries is generally high,the proportion of the tertiary industry needs to be further improved,and the internal structure of the industry is unreasonable.As the economic growth slows down,the development mode of the high energy consumption,high pollution and high investment secondary industry that used to rely excessively on cheap labor will be unsustainable,and the industrial structure needs to be transformed and upgraded urgently.Adequate labor is an important guarantee for the upgrading of industrial structure.However,since the 21 st century,the “demographic dividend” has gradually subsided,the problem of population aging has become increasingly prominent,and the labor has been decreasing,bringing a series of economic and social problems.China urgently needs to explore new economic growth drivers and promote industrial structure upgrading in the context of increasing population aging.The current consensus in the academic world is to continuously improve the level of technology and improve the ability of scientific and technological innovation.Many economic theories point out that technological progress is an important driving force for economic growth and plays an important role in promoting industrial structure upgrading.The report of the 18 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China clearly stated that "the strategy of innovation-driven development should be implemented",and the advancement of technology should be placed in an important position to promote high-quality economic development.This paper first briefly introduces the current situation of population aging,technological progress and industrial structure,and then conducts theoretical analysis on the influence mechanism of the three factors.Then,based on the inter-provincial panel data from 2003 to 2016,the paper constructs fixed-effect model,two-step GMM model and threshold model for empirical analysis.The study found that:(1)Under the control of children's dependency ratio,urbanization rate,foreign direct investment and other variables,population aging and technological progress have significantly promoted the industrial structure upgrade.(2)After adding the lagging item of industrial structure upgrade to the dynamic panel,it is found that the current industrial structure is related to the industrial structure in the previous period,the aging of the population and technological progress will still promote the upgrading of the industrial structure.(3)Further research found that under different levels of technological progress,the direction and extent of the impact of population aging on industrial structure upgrading are significantly different.When the level of technological progress is low,the aging of the population will inhibit the upgrading of industrial structure;when the level of technological progress is at an intermediate level,the impact of population aging on industrial structure upgrading is not significant;when the level of technological progress is high,population aging will promote the upgrading of industrial structure significantly.(4)The impact of population aging and technological progress in different regions on the upgrading of industrial structure is quite different.The aging of the population and technological advancement have played a significant role in promoting the upgrading of industrial structure in the central and western regions,and the impact in the eastern region is not significant.Finally,based on the main conclusions of the study,this paper puts forward suggestions: we should positively consider the aging problem,actively grasp the development opportunities brought by aging,improve the level of technological progress,promote the development of the tertiary industry,and realize the optimization and upgrading of industrial structure.