Research On The Impact Of Population Aging On Consumption Structure

As early as the 1990 s,economists have pointed out that the age structure of the population is closely related to economic development.Only when the population changes in line with economic development,can the whole social economy run sustainably.With the continuous development of the economy,many developed countries are facing the problem of increasing the elderly population and aging the age structure of the population.At the beginning,the research on this issue in various countries mainly focused on the more intuitive impact of labor shortage or the increase of social pension burden.However,with the deepening of the aging of the world,deeper problems such as mismatch of resources,imbalance of economic structure and even national defense security gradually emerged,and the problem of population aging has attracted more and more attention.The problem of population aging in China is different from that in other developed countries.Because of the excessive interference of population policies(such as the policy of encouraging reproduction in the early years of the founding of the People's Republic and the policy of family planning implemented in the 1970s),the observation of the effect of such policies has a serious time lag.By the beginning of this century,the people of China will have a long way to go.There has been a serious mismatch between the age structure of population and the economic structure: the reproduction of population is not a long-term slow change due to economic development and the change of fertility concept,but a rapid change due to human intervention,and the economic development speed of the same period is far behind the change speed of the age structure of population.As a result,the problem of population aging in China is more serious and far-reaching than that in other countries with the same level of economic development.The most intuitive problem brought by population aging is the reduction of labor force and the increase of pension burden.This is also the first problem that has been noticed by scholars at home and abroad.There are relatively more and more in-depth studies on this aspect.Until nearly ten years,scholars have been engaged in the research of structural problems caused by population aging.The essence of population aging is not the pension problem,but the population.The unreasonable age structure.Among them,people as the main body of social and economic activities,unreasonable age structure of the population will inevitably affect all aspects of the economy.From the perspective of its impact on consumption,the author elaborates the impact of population aging on consumption structure.The study of consumption has existed for a long time.Different scholars from different countries have clarified the influencing factors of consumption from different angles.For example,the most important influencing factor of consumption must be income.Many scholars have studied it from the aspects of social security,savings,consumption tendency and so on.However,the research of these scholars is based on the premise that consumers' consumption behavior is stable and unchanged.Life cycle theory just breaks this tradition and proposes that age will have an important impact on people's consumption behavior.So when the age structure of the whole society changes dramatically,will the consumption structure of the society change accordingly? This is the focus of this study: what changes will the consumption structure take place when the population is aging.Firstly,it introduces the current situation of population aging and consumption structure in China.China's aging population is large in scale,fast in development and severely out of touch with the current economy,which makes it difficult for China's current economic level to meet the special needs of large elderly groups.At the same time,the current consumption structure shows the characteristics of continuous optimization and upgrading with economic progress.Studying the influence of population aging on consumption structure is helpful for us to grasp the social demand under the background of aging population age structure,and for the government to guide and adjust the industrial structure in time.It has important practical significance.In order to further analyze the correlation between the two,the author combs the relevant literature and theory,and holds that the aging of the population mainly influences the consumption structure from the micro and macro dimensions from both direct and indirect aspects: from the micro level,the income and consumption preferences of the elderly population have changed,so with the aging of the population,their income and consumption demand have changed.From the macro level,the aging of the population will change the consumption structure by affecting income distribution,total social production,labor productivity,transfer payments and industrial structure.Secondly,the author collects and collates the macro-statistical data of population aging and consumption structure,hoping to provide some evidence for theoretical analysis.Through the analysis and collation of macro-statistical data,the author finds that the degree of aging in China is deepening,at the same time,China's consumption structure is constantly optimizing,but whether the two are related still needs further study.In order to prove the impact of population aging on consumption structure from an empirical point of view,the author collects and collates provincial statistical data of 15 provinces in China from 2004 to 2017,takes the proportion of consumption in total consumption expenditure as the agency index of consumption structure as the explanatory variable,takes the elderly dependency ratio as the main explanatory variable,and chooses the disposable income of residents as the main explanatory variable.Six control variables,including income,consumption propensity,real interest rate,inflation rate,social security level and education years per capita,establish a multiple regression model for population aging and consumption structure.It is concluded that with the deepening of population aging,the consumption of Chinese residents has shifted from survival consumption(food,clothing,residence,etc.)to hedonic consumption(daily necessities,medicine,etc.).Health care,education,culture and entertainment,etc.,that is,the proportion of consumption expenditure of survival consumption(food,clothing,residence,etc.)decreases with the deepening of population aging,while the expenditure of developing hedonic consumption(household goods,medical care,education,culture and entertainment,etc.)increases with the deepening of population aging.It is concluded that population aging contributes to the optimization and upgrading of consumption structure.?Finally,in view of the conclusion that the aging population has promoted the upgrading of consumption structure,the following suggestions are put forward: first,to create a policy environment suitable for the aging society at the government level,to increase the transfer payments,to establish a new social security system,to standardize the market of aged products,to increase supervision,to rationally adjust population policies,to slow down the aging process,and to focus on economic construction and enabling.The level of economic development is in line with the age structure of the population;secondly,we should establish a market environment to meet the consumption needs of the elderly at the enterprise level.On the one hand,we should attach importance to the silver market and vigorously develop the health industry;on the other hand,we should create more job opportunities for the elderly and develop their human resources;thirdly,we should build a social environment suitable for the elderly from the social level and transform society.“ Talk about the mentality of "old color change" and encourage the elderly to participate in economic activities and social construction.