人口老龄化必然导致资本替代劳动吗

Would Population Aging Cause Capital to Replace Labor?

经济学理论认为,人口老龄化会导致劳动力成本上升,从而改变企业的要素结构、通过资本替代劳动的方式应对,但不同类型的企业对老龄化做出的反应可能存在差异,需要进行深入分析。文章利用中国工业企业数据对上述问题进行了研究,实证结果显示:整体来看,人口老龄化显著提高了企业的资本劳动比,但资本劳动比的上升并不一定表现为资本对劳动的替代。在规模较大、融资约束较轻的企业,老龄化促使其用固定资产投资替代了劳动,但在规模较小和融资约束程度较为严重的企业,人口老龄化并没有显著提高其固定资产投资,只是缩小了其劳动力雇佣规模,说明企业规模和融资约束是影响企业要素结构升级的重要因素。此外,文章还发现人口老龄化主要促使企业利用资本替代低技能劳动力,而人口老龄化的资本替代劳动效应在资本密集型、生产率水平较高和非出口企业中更为显著。文章从微观企业投资视角拓展了人口老龄化的经济效应的研究范畴,并通过规模效应和融资约束角度分析了制约工业企业提高智能化生产程度的因素,从而对传统的见解提供了有益的补充。文章的研究结论能够为政府制定积极应对人口老龄化和助力企业要素结构升级的相关政策提供经验证据的支持。

At present,the degree of population aging in China is in a stage of rapid development,and how to effectively deal with the adverse effects of aging has become a major theoretical and practical issue that the government and academia are concerned about.The aging of the population means that traditional labor-intensive industries and low-end manufacturing are unsustainable.They are the appropriate ways to actively deal with the population aging by optimizing the industrial structure,improving labor productivity and technological innovation capabilities,replacing labor with capital and technology,and transforming industrial structure to capital-intensive and technology-intensive.Traditional economic wisdom shows that population aging will lead to rising labor costs,and this could furtherly lead to changing the factor structure of firms by replacing labor with physical capital.However,different types of firms may respond differently to population aging,which requires in-depth analysis.This paper uses the database of Annual Survey Industrial Firms to study the above problems.The empirical results show that,on the whole,the aging of the population has significantly increased the capital-labor ratio of industrial enterprises,but the increase in the capital-labor ratio does not necessarily reflect the substitution of capital for labor.In theory,firm can increase the capital-labor ratio by increasing fixed-asset investment,maintaining or reducing the number of employees,or by increasing both the fixed-asset investment and the number of employees at the same time.So,this paper examines the impact of population aging on firm fixed asset investment and employment behavior.The results show that aging significantly increases fixed asset investment,but reduces the number of employees,and firms are more likely to use capital replaces the low-skilled workers.Furtherly,this paper explores whether the firm size effect and financing constraints constitute obstacles for industrial enterprises to cope with the aging of the population.The results show that in large firms or firms with less financing constraints,aging has prompted them to replace labor with capital,however,in small firms or firms with more severe financing constraints,population aging has not significantly increased their fixed asset investment,but only reduces the number of workers.These results indicate that firm size effect and financing constraints are important factors affecting the upgrading of firm factor structure.In addition,we also find that the impact of population aging on the substitution effect of labor and capital is more significant in capital-intensive,high-productivity and non-exporting firms.This paper expands the research scope of the economic effects of population aging from the perspective of firm investment,and we analyze the factors that restrict firms from replacing capital with labor from the perspective of firm size effect and financing constraints,thus providing a useful supplement to traditional insights.Our research conclusions can provide empirical evidence for the government to formulate relevant policies to actively respond to the aging of the population and promote the upgrading of the factor structure of enterprises.