The Impact Of China’s Population Aging On Export Sructure

The structure of export trade has a profound internal relationship with the mode of economic growth.Compared with the absolute amount of exports,the capital intensity,technical level and quality level of export products are more important for the improvement of the long-term growth of a country’s economy.China has a large population base and a heavy burden of support.It is in the critical period of the transformation of the age structure of the population,and the large scale of the elderly population has had a huge impact on China’s export trade.The existing research mainly studies the influence of population age structure on export trade from the perspective of trade balance and the comparative advantage of capital intensive goods,but less on the impact of aging on the technical level and quality level of export products.Therefore,this paper uses domestic provincial panel data to portray the export trade structure from the perspectives of comparative advantages of capital-intensive exports.Sophistication,and quality of export products,and uses the above three indicators of export trade structure to explore the impact of population aging on the "quality" of export trade.This paper selects the import and export data of the 20 categories of trade products of the provinces in 2004-2017,and measures three dimensions of the transformation of export structure in each province,namely the comparative advantage of capital intensive exports,the Sophistication and the quality of export products.Taking the proportion of the population over 65 years old to the total population as a measure of aging,innovatively introduce the the square of aging to construct a nonlinear empirical model,combining macroeconomic variables such as economic growth rate,human capital level and per capita capital stock,and taking the provincial panel as a sample to analyze the impact of aging on the transformation of export structure.The results show that the impact of aging on the transformation of export structure is a gradual change of nonlinear process.The marsinal impact of the degree of aging on the comparative advantages of capital-intensive exports.the Sophistication,and the quality of export products all showed a "U"’-type nonlinear trend that first declined and then rose,and most provinces are about to or have crossed the inflection point of "U" type.Further grouping results show that the impact of aging on the comparative advantages of capital-intensive exports.Sophistication and quality of export products all show a significant "U" trend in provinces with higher levels of human capital.In the provinces with lower levels of human capital,the results are not significant.The results of the grouping of per capita capital stocks have reached similar conclusions.Finally,based on the conclusions of empirical research,this paper puts forward some policy recommendations.For example,China needs to improve the active response to the transformation of labor advantages brought about by aging,increase human capital investment,and improve capital utilization efficiency.As China’s population dividends gradually disappear,the constraints on labor supply are gradually increasing,the transformation and upgrading of foreign trade from the export development model of "quantity expansion" to "connotation upgrading" is particularly urgent.Therefore,it is necessary to study the impact of China’s demographic changes on export trade,verify the logical relationship between population structure and foreign trade,so that all regions can maintain export stability and strategic upgrade in the process of adjusting economic structure.