人口老龄化、公共人力资本投资与经济增长

Population Aging,Public Investment in Human Capital and Economic Growth

当前人口老龄化进程明显加快,公共财政资源配置的现实情况是,公共健康保障支出剧增而公共教育支出水平较低,从而引发出是否由于人口老龄化导致当前公共人力资本支出结构失衡的疑问。从理论层面构建了一个三部门的涵盖老中青三代的世代交叠模型,探讨人口老龄化、公共人力资本投资和经济增长三者之间的影响机制,检验人口老龄化对公共教育支出的挤占效应,并剖析经济可持续增长下公共人力资本投资的最优结构;从实证层面运用中国省级面板数据进一步检验当前公共人力资本投资结构的平衡性,检验公共教育支出是否向公共健康保障支出转移,探寻经济增长视角下最优的公共人力资本投资规模和结构。结果表明:(1)人口老龄化会通过影响公共人力资本投资的相对规模和结构进而影响经济增长;(2)人口老龄化不利于经济增长时,公共人力资本投资占GDP的比重及公共健康保障支出占公共人力资本投资的比重增加也会对经济增长产生抑制作用;(3)目前我国公共健康保障支出占公共人力资本投资的比重过大,公共健康保障支出挤占了公共教育支出,进而抑制了经济增长。

Population aging is obviously accelerating.The allocation of public financial resources shows sharply-increasing expenditure on health care versus low spending on public education.This leads to a question:Is the imbalanced expenditure structure caused by population aging?A three-sector generation overlapping model covering three generations(the aged,the middle-aged and the young)was developed from the theoretical level to explore the influencing mechanism among population aging,public investment in human capital and economic growth.The crowding-out effect of population aging on public education expenditure,and the optimal structure of public human capital investment under sustainable economic growth were also examined.Then from the empirical level this paper further tested the balance of the current public investment structure using China’s provincial panel data,examined whether the public education expenditure were transferred to public health care,and figured out the optimal scale and structure of public investment on human capital from the perspective of economic growth.Results show that population aging affects economic growth by influencing the relative scale and structure of public investment on human capital.Besides,when population aging becomes a disadvantage to economic growth,the increase in the proportion of public human capital investment in GDP and the increase in the proportion of public health care expenditure in human capital investment will also have a restraining effect on economic growth.In addition,the overly high proportion of public health care expenditure in human capital investment means that health care squeezes out expenditure on public education,and thereby hinders economic growth.