| Since China’s reform and opening up, the continuous high speed economic growth for thirty years has created a miracle in the history of economic growth. In the meantime, benefit from the family planning policy, and China’s population denpendency ratio have continued to decline(the ratio of the total population of the children from0to14years old and the aged people over65years old and the total population of working age population between15and64). Calculated by the census data, the population denpendency ratio of China was62.6%in1982, but it dropped to34.2%in2010. The decline of population denpendency ratio has made great contribution to economic growth, which is called "demographic dividend". However, with the growing trend of China’s aging population, the "demographic dividend" advantage is declining. From the perspective of population aging and labor force’s age structure change, this dissertation examines the relationship between age structure of the population and economic growth. We expect to find how the process of population aging and the process of labor force’s age structure changes will affect economic growth, in order to fully evaluate the effects of the age structure change of the population on economic growth. Economic growth is not just the expansion of the economies size, we also need to focus on the quality of growth and the sustainability of growth, and total factor productivity is the important tool that can measure the quality and sustainability of economic growth. Therefore, the total factor productivity is included in the dissertation to analyze whether the transformation of population age structure can bring the "growing effect". Finally, because economic growth is usually accompanied by cyclical fluctuations, population age structure change is usually accompanied by the changes of labor force participation. The third perspective of the dissertation is to investigate whether the population age structure can bring growth volatility, which is the "cyclical effect" of economic growth.This dissertation consists of six chapters. The first chapter is the preface which is about the theory and research background, research route and innovation. The second chapter includes a brief description of the basic theory in the population economics, economic growth and so on; a review of important theoretical and empirical literature; the research framework which lays a foundation for the next contents. In the third chapter, we study whether the age structure of population has a "level effects" on economic growth. The forth chapter investigates how the age structure transition will affect "growth effects" of economic growth. In the fifth chapter, we analyze the "business cycle effects" on economy made by population age structure transition from theoretical analysis and empirical approach. The last chapter is a brief introduction of primary conclusions, policy suggestions of this dissertation. Specifically, the main theoretical and empirical conclusions of this dissertation are as follows.First, viewed from the "level effects", the proportion of aging population and old-age dependency can boost economic growth. We explain this phenomenon from human capital investment and saving behaviour in the process of demographic transition. In the second section analysis, we find that different age groups of labor force population have different effects on economic growth. In sum, with the change of population age structure, the share of working-age population will have an increasing effect on economic growth.We also found that the relationship between the share of working-age population and economic growth is "inverse-U shape", and that45-54years-old labor force have the greatest impact on economic growth. In consideration of the large-scale labor mobility, we forecast that population age structure transition will generate a "spatial spillover" effect on economic growth. The further study is to test the spatial spillover effect.Second, in view of "growth effects", we calculate total factor productivity (TFP) with the approach presented by Ray et al (1997), and then find that TFP experienced a rising trend in1990-2010. Looked from the regions, the TFP growth in the eastern region is greater than the middle region, and the TFP growth in the middle region is greater than the western region. The empirical test shows that the increasing proportion of aging population and old-agedependencyratio can promote the TFP growth. We offered explanation of this phenomenon from the point of human capital investment and the substitution of capital for labor in demographic transition process. In the second part analysis, we find that different age groups of labor force population have different effects on TFP growth. Totally, with the change of population age structure, the increasing working-age population will have an influence on TFP growth, namely, taking on the trend of rising first, and then dropping continuously, and that35-44year-old labor force have the greatest impact on TFP. In the end, based on the third chapter, we use spatial analysis method to investigate the "spatial spillover" of age structure on TFP growthFinally, from the perspective of "business cycle effects", we first investigate labor participation rate fluctuation of the labor force by age group. And we observe that the labor participation rate fluctuation of the unskilled labor force is bigger than the skilled labor force. Through an extension of RBC model, we theoretically prove that the cycle fluctuation in the young labor force is greater than the middle-aged. Based on the measurement of economic fluctuations with four kinds of filtering method which are commonly used in macroeconomics, we examine the relationship between labor age structure and business cycle fluctuation. The first result is the share of the working population of age in15to24and55to64, the increase of two groups of working population will boost economic cycle fluctuation; the second test is that we use the whole age structure of labor force to observe the effect on economic fluctuations, the results still show that young and aging working force is the main factor that leads to economic cycle fluctuation, while the other group is slow down the economic cycle fluctuation. |
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