Research On The Impact Mechanism Of Population Aging On Technological Progress

Against the background of deepening ageing and the increasing dependence of China's economic development on technological progress,population ageing affects labor efficiency,new technology input and human capital levels,while labor efficiency,investment in scientific research resources,and human capital levels Have an impact on technological progress.Therefore,it is of great theoretical and practical significance to study how population aging affects technological progress.At the theoretical level,this article analyzes the related literature and concludes that there are three main mechanisms that affect the technological progress of population aging: "human capital effect","labor efficiency effect",and "input effect".Specifically,first,according to Schultz's human capital theory,human capital is the collective term for workers' knowledge,skills,work ability,and health.The aging of the population will directly cause changes in the structure of human capital,which will have an impact on technological progress.This is the "human capital effect".Second,the increase in the aging population means a direct change in the employment structure of the enterprise,which will increase the cost of the enterprise.That is to say,in order to complete the production tasks of the enterprise,more young labor force is needed,and companies are forced to start from the perspective of updating technology to improve labor production efficiency in order to reduce costs andpromote technological progress.This is the "labor efficiency effect";third,The aging of the population will increase the government's pension burden and crowd out government investment in scientific research,which is not conducive to technological progress.In terms of empirical research,this paper uses the input-output data of 31 provinces from 2003 to 2017 and calculates the Malmquist index based on DEAP software,which can derive the TFP growth rate and its factor decomposition.Using the factor decomposition technology progress index as the explained variable,and then selecting the fixed-effect panel model to systematically analyze the impact mechanism of population aging on technological progress,and setting up regional dummy variables to test the robustness of the model and enhance the credibility of the empirical results degree.The empirical results found that: the impact of population aging on technological progress has two opposing effects,of which population aging significantly improves technological progress through the "human capital effect" and "labor efficiency effect",but squeezes out research funds through the "input effect" Investment has hampered technological progress.Based on the above three effects,this paper analyzes the impact of population aging on scientific and technological progress,and puts forward corresponding feasible suggestions to play the positive spillover effect of aging on scientific and technological progress.