Economic Development,Regional Difference And Population Aging In China ——Empirical Research Based On Spatial Heterogeneity

The reform and opening up since the 1980s is an important turning point of China’s modern development.It not only greatly improves the comprehensive national strength,but also changes the economic system and social structure of China in the past four decades.With the significant improvement of people’s living standards,our society is also facing many challenges in the development.The increasingly severe aging situation has become one of the most critical issues.Different from foreign scholars’ research emphasis on the relationship between aging population and life cycle theory,social productivity and age structure complementation,Chinese scholars focus on the aspects like public policy,demographic transition and social deposit,most of whom hold the view that aging society does harm to economic prospect rather than good.However,aging is rich in both economic and social attributes.These studies not only lack empirical support for the positive economic effects of aging,but also generalize the national situation and ignore the important role of regional differences.This will also be the main contribution point of this article.Therefore,this paper would study the relationship between aging population and regional economic development from the perspective of regional heterogeneity.In this paper,the Solow model including aging factors is used as the theoretical support.After considering the economic and geographical factors,the whole country is divided into four regions: Northeast,East,Central and West.According to the aging coefficient and the ratio of old to young coefficient derived from 30 provincial panel data in 2000-2017,the Theil index is calculated and the polarization trend is comprehensively analyzed.Finally,the data from 2000 to 2017 are empirically tested with Feasible General Least Squares（FGLS）and Seemingly Unrelated Regression（SUR）at the national and regional levels,respectively.In addition,this article uses Panel-Corrected Standard Error（PCSE）for regional development mechanism analysis,making regression results more descriptive and logical.In this study,the theoretical results show that the aging has the effect of economic growth and the core role of birth rate’s influence on the aging phenomenon.Moreover,there exist obvious differences in the current situation of aging population in different regions of China.The differences within those regions are more obvious than the differences among those regions,with the deepening of each regions’ polarization trend.Besides,the empirical results have shown that aging population has a positive effect on local economic growth in that the sending effect of the old’s deposit did prompt the economic development in most areas.The conclusion that the internal structure of Northeast China is stable and the development of West China meets the “endogenous theory of population” also prove from the side that the spatial heterogeneity of China’s economic development is very sharp.The variables such as the fiscal expenditure of local governments and the number of years of education per capita in multiple regions have prominent mediating effects on economic development and social structure.This paper’s analysis based on local situations might be more suitable for China’s basic national conditions.At the end of this paper,some suggestions are put forward from the perspective of economic population policy,social development,old-age system and industrial distribution according to the conclusion.In the process of China’s industrial distribution,comparative advantages of each region should be well considered to optimize the flow of labor resources.What’s more,local government are suggested to try their best in continuing to implement the “Two-Children Policy” and ensuring execution effect could go on through supporting measures,so as to consolidate and innovate ways of raising pension funds and to perfect legal safeguard system.Only through this kind of multi-pronged approach could the aging population bring its positive effects into full play,thus boosting the social and economic redevelopment in the future.