The Research On The Nexus Between China's Demographic And Labor Transformation And Environmental Pollution Under The Background Of Economic Structural Improvement

Currently,China's economy has entered the‘New-Normal'phase,in which China's economic structure has been improving consistently and the pressure on energy consumption and environmental quality has mounted.Meanwhile,China's demographic structure has changed significantly,as the birth rate has been lowering,the aging society looms,and the‘Demographic Dividend'is exhausting.During the critical period of economic structural transformation,the changes in China's demographic structure may have significant influences on China's economic growth,energy consumption and environmental quality.After taking several key characteristics of China's demographic development comprehensively into consideration,this study would utilize provincial and city-level panel data and reasonable empirical methods to thoroughly and quantitatively investigate the influences of demographic change on China's environmental quality.In the meanwhile,based on the analytic framework of economic growth theory,development economics and environmental economics,some rigorous explanations for the results of the empirical study would be made.The empirical results are:The existence of an inverted-U shaped EKC for CO₂ emissions suggests that the indirect effects of the share of the working-age population on CO₂ emissions depend on the level of GDP per capita.The indirect effects of the working-age population on environmental quality are therefore functions of GDP per capita.Our measures of total effects are monotonically increasing in the share of working-age population and the total effects follow the patterns of the indirect effects,which dominate the direct one.In the relatively less developed provinces,there is a window of opportunity for them to kill two birds with one stone;in the environmental sense,caution should be exercised to relieve the worry for the current ageing in some province.A higher ratio of the labor force working in the nonagricultural sector leads to higher pollution.The policies aimed at balance the regional development and reduce the income gap among regions would reduce the transfer of labor force and improve the environmental quality.The coefficients of SO₂ spatial impacts are all significantly negative,implying that local pollution would deteriorate and local labor supply would also decrease due to the adverse environment quality of its neighbors.This expulsion effects of pollutions on labor supply,is another clear proof for a negative feedback mechanism between labor supply and economic growth.Thus coordination across regions in fighting against the haze and fog should be decreed;In some small fellow towns?or satellite cities?,whose are emerging or located to the edges or outskirts of metropolitans,there is a window of opportunity for them to attract talents,which may be a late-development advantage;because even in the short-run,fighting against the haze and fog,would benefit the urban employment and economic development,a counterbalance of the benefits and costs in curbing the haze and fog should be calculated.The empirical analyses may provide solid research foundations and important policy implications to a series of vital challenges China encountered nowadays,including how to effectively cope with demographic change,how to speed up the improvement of industrial structure,and to enhance the harmonious and sustainable development of people,energy,and the environment.