中国人口转变的经济效应——基于省级数据的空间面板模型分析

Impact of Demographic Transition on Economic Growth in China:An analysis of Spatial Panel Model based on provincial data

由于对经济发展速度、经济发展模式可持续性问题的关注,人口红利问题近期又成为学术界和政府关注的焦点。在以往的实证文献中,由于在对人口红利的概念理解、研究方法、变量选择方面有很大差异,研究结论之间存在较大分歧。本文基于经济收敛理论,构建空间面板计量模型,在控制了产业结构、城市化水平、科技发展等因素的前提下,考察了人口结构转变对经济发展的影响,以及省级之间的空间效应。结果表明,1983—1992年期间,由于劳动年龄人口快于总人口的增长所带来的经济增长,占人均GDP增长的14.1%;而从1983—2009年整个时期来看,人口结构转变所引致的经济增长占整个人均GDP增长的6.9%。分东、中、西部考察发现,西部地区由于人口结构转变而带来的经济贡献要远远大于东部和中部。对少儿抚养比和老年抚养比的考察则发现,少儿抚养比与人均GDP增长是显著的负向关系,而老年抚养比的影响不显著。上述研究结果意味着,在人口转变的过程中,由于劳动年龄人口的增长速度超过总人口的增长速度而带来的人均收入的增加,这个值并不一定是正数,当人口转变进入到下一阶段,劳动年龄人口的增长速度慢于退休年龄人口,人口年龄结构变化的作用则转变为抑制人均产出。同时,这一增长效应能否在事实上转化为实际的经济增长,还要取决于一国的产业政策、就业政策以及教育政策。对于劳动年龄人口快于总人口的增长所带来的经济增长效应以及这一效应有多大,需要谨慎地看待,片面夸大或忽视劳动年龄人口增长对经济增长的作用和影响都是不可取的。

Due to focusing on the pace of economic development and the sustainability of economic development mode, the demographic dividend has once again become the focus of academic and policy circles. But the conclusions of previous studies have considerable differences owing to different understandings of the concept of demographic dividend, different methods, and different variables. This paper builds a spatial panel econometric model to investigate the contribution of de mographic change on economic growth and the effect of the space at the provincial level by using the Chinese provincial panel data from 1983 to 2009. The results show that, during 1983-1992, the economic growth for the working age population faster than the population growth amounts to 14.1% of per capita GDP growth. And from the entire period during 1983-2009, the working age population that grows faster than population increase has brought about economic growth which rea- ches 6.9% of per capita GDP growth. In the same period, the economic growth for the change in population structure in the western region is much larger than the eastern and central areas. And the per capita GDP growth has a significant negative relationship with the children dependency ratio, which has no significant effect with the elderly dependency ratio. This hence provides a new perspective for understanding the problems of China＇s demographic dividend.