Demographic Transition, Technological Progress And Sustainable Agricultural Growth

Different from the traditional concept of population change,the demographic transition is a population production gradually transforming process from high fertility to high human capital accumulation rate.With the process of industrialization,one of the stylized facts is that the transition from quantity preference to quality preference.For the demographic transition,there exist two modes of economy:traditional economy and modern economy,and two stages can be also distinguished,one is that the industrialized economy instead of traditional economy,the other is modern economy beyond the industrialized economy.Without the endogenous mechanism of human capital in the formation of demographic transition,it couldn't possibly happen that the propulsion of advanced industrialized stage and completion of modernization.The development of social economy is an important factor affecting the number of children in rural families.When farmers' real incomes increased,rural families prefer to invest more in children's quality rather than quantity.More return is from their children's rising educational level not from greater number.For parents,the children's improved education level becomes more important,and the premise of improved quality is to reduce the number of children,that is the process of quality instead of quantity preference,also called the demographic transition.Under the background of non-agricultural irreversible trend of agricultural labor and agricultural land,the sustainable growth of agriculture in China does not depend on the factors of traditional agricultural production.The characteristic of the land and the labor force is diminishing marginal revenue,which is determines the limitation of the effect on agricultural sustainable growth.The factors of traditional agricultural are no longer suitable for development model of Chinese agriculture in the future.The use of new technology in agricultural production is an alternative to the traditional elements to overcome the constraints of resources,and the technological progress can break through the marginal revenue maximization.The characteristics of increasing marginal revenue determine that the technological progress is the primary source of the modern agricultural growth.The demographic transition of agricultural is reducing the number of agricultural labor force and improving the quality of the labor force,accelerating the transfer of agricultural labor,and increasing the accumulation of agricultural material capital,and improving the level of human capital of agricultural labor.The demographic transition brings the guarantee of population,material and capital to the agricultural technology progress,promotes the technical progress,and ensres the sustainable growth of agriculture.In order to verify the conclusion of theoretical analysis,the author makes empirical test on 14 developed countries having finished demographic transition,and three parts of China with the panel data model.The results show that agricultural growth of developed countries,the use of agricultural machinery and chemical fertilizers affected the growth of agriculture,while the land and labor played a negative role in the development of agriculture.Due to the imbalance of social and economic development,different part of China,the agriculture production factors play different role in the growth of agriculture.The different level of economic development,the impact of agricultural traditional factors and technical progress on agricultural sustainable growth is also different.Regardless of the level of economic,agricultural demographic transition and technological progress have significant positive correlation.The demographic transition has become one of the important factors of agricultural technological progress in China.With the advance of industrialization and urbanization,demographic transition has become the only effective way to sustainable agriculture.The empirical facts of demographic transition show that China's economic development has entered a new stage of accelerating the process of modernization.In the late stage of industrialization,the policy of agricultural development should also be transformed.The population quality bonus from the demographic transition can improve the efficiency of rural human capital allocation.The demographic transition can ensure the smooth transfer of rural surplus labor force and improve the level of human capital of agricultural population,utilizing quality of agricultural population to promote agricultural technology progress and modernization.