人力资本进步、工资结构与区域赡养负担差异

Human Capital Progress,Wage Structure and Regional Dependency Burden Differences

我国部分地区存在社会保障赡养负担重、资本和年轻劳动力流出等现象,成为事关共同富裕和区域协调发展的重要问题。本文基于人力资本进步和工资结构压缩的理论框架为这些现象提供了统一的解释性假说。研究发现:市场化程度偏低的地区赡养负担较重,主要不是老龄化程度高导致的,而可能是在工资结构压缩机制作用下,年轻劳动力工资相对老年劳动力工资水平较低,这一方面引发年轻劳动力流出,另一方面导致企业对老年劳动力需求减少,未使用老年劳动力增加,两者共同推高赡养负担,并诱发资本流出,影响经济发展。上述现象是市场化程度不足的地区在高速人力资本进步环境下的一种“不适应症”,对于老年劳动力可替代性强的行业和地区尤其明显,并会随劳动力跨区域流动成本下降而加剧。通过完善市场化薪酬分配机制可以缓解上述“不适应症”。

In recent years,there is a heavy dependency burden in some areas of China,especially in the north,and the social insurance fund is seriously out of balance.Meanwhile,these areas are also facing problems such as the loss of the young population,the outflow of industrial capital,and the decline of economic growth,and the widening gap between these areas and southern areas with a high level of market economy.This has become a critical issue affecting the realization of common prosperity and coordinated regional development at the national level.What are the factors resulting in these differences in regions with different degrees of marketization,such as the north and the south?Empirical data show that the aging of the population is far from enough to explain the relationship between the dependency burden and the degree of marketization.As far as the outflow of population and capital is concerned,the difference in the degree of marketization between the north and the south is often considered to be an important cause of the above-mentioned differences.However,in order to accurately implement policies and measures,it is necessary to clarify which differences and how they are caused by market-oriented factors.In this paper,a new perspective is provided for understanding these differences through a structural model.China has a relatively high level of human capital in the young workers,but much low level among the elderly approaching retirement,resulting in a huge intergenerational gap in human capital.However,if the wage is paid entirely according to the contribution of labor factors,the enthusiasm of older employees may be dampened,so enterprises must also pay higher wages to older employees with the progress of the human capital of young workers.As a result,the wages of the young generate an externality to the wages of the elderly,which leads to a more compressed wage structure in state-owned enterprises and areas with more state-owned enterprises as shown in the theoretical model.On the one hand,the underpayment of the young labor force can easily lead to the loss of young labor force;on the other hand,since the wage of the elderly labor force is more rigid,enterprises will have insufficient demand for the elderly labor force,hoping to replace older employees earlier,thus increasing the number of unused elderly human resources.Both of these two aspects increase the dependency burden.The outflow of the young population and the decline in the labor force participation rate of the elderly also means a reduction in the labor force in these areas,which will also lead to more loss of capital and industries through the so-called capital-chase-labor mechanism.Therefore,there is a widening economic gap between different regions such as the north and the south.According to the results of theoretical analysis,a new idea to alleviate the differences in dependency burden and economic development between regions was put forward in this paper.If the heavy dependency burden and the outflow of talents and capital are associated with the degree of marketization of the allocation of labor factors in the areas where the northern state-owned enterprises are concentrated,then it is necessary to deepen the reform of the wage system so that the wage level of workers can better reflect their marginal product value.This will help to enhance the attractiveness of these areas to the young labor force,and will also help to increase the demand of enterprises for the elderly labor force,both of which will promote the reduction of the dependency burden of old-age insurance and contribute to the blackflow of capital and the economic revitalization of the old industrial areas in the north,and promote common prosperity.The main contribution of this paper is that through a structural model combined with the fair-wage theory,it is only necessary to assume that the wage structure is different in regions with different degrees of marketization in the environment of high-speed human capital progress and then the various regional differences phenomena can be generated naturally and fitted quantitatively,so as to establish a unified,logically self-consistent explanatory theoretical hypothesis that is highly matched with the empirical data in order to uncover the possible reasons behind various phenomena.