The Impact Of China’s Population Aging On The Comparative Advantage Of Manufacturing Exports

As an important part of the global value chain with abundant labor resources,China is facing the increasingly serious problem of an aging population.The manufacturing industry is facing the problem of fading labor cost advantages brought about by an aging population.However,the industrial structure has not been upgraded and the comparative advantage of China’s manufacturing exports is still concentrated in labor-intensive industries.Under this situation,the research of the impact of population aging on the comparative advantage of China’s manufacturing exports is important to the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing.Firstly,this thesis presents the current situation of China’s population aging and manufacturing comparative advantage,and introduces the theoretical basis.The impact of population aging on the comparative advantage of manufacturing exports is divided into two aspects:the supply of labor and social consumption demand.And the Overlapping Generation Model can be used to support this impact mechanism.Secondly,this thesis establishes an econometric model with cross terms and then conducts regression analysis through the population age index and the panel data of China’s labor-intensive industries and capital-intensive industries industries from 2006 to 2020.It is concluded that the aging of the population has a obvious negative impact on the comparative advantage of China’s labor-intensive industries.It is not conducive to the development of the comparative advantage of capital-intensive industries in the short term,but in the long run,it is conducive to the further improvement of the degree of capitalization of the industry.According to the results,it is found that the increase of foreign capital entry is not conducive to the comparative advantage of China’s manufacturing,and will make the industry fall into the trap of "comparative advantage".In addition,through the empirical test of dynamic panel data,this thesis finds that the impact of population aging on the comparative advantage of China’s manufacturing exports is generally unfavorable,and the negative impact on labor-intensive industries is greater than that on capital-intensive industries.According to the results,this thesis gives the following suggestions:(1)Improve maternity policy and increase labor force participation rate to increase the reserve of labor and maintain the comparative advantage of labor-intensive industries;(2)Develop the economy and improve the pension system to promote social consumption and investment;(3)Inspire export enterprises to carry out technological innovation and change the situation of low-end production;(4)Enhance the foreign investment supervision system and property rights protection system to attract high-end foreign investment to promote the development of capital-intensive export comparative advantages.